Repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell Law

Those of us, who never considered serving in the military, might also never consider what it would mean to hide our sexuality while performing a difficult and dangerous job. The military, as we have all seen in movies and documentaries, is a culture of its own, one that fosters interdependence and deep trust to ensure personal safety in dangerous situations. How the authors of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law planned for that trust to be developed in an environment of mistrust and dishonesty they didn’t bother to explain. Since most homophobic attitudes are based on religious or other misinformed ideological dogma, they have no place in US laws, and should be expunged permanently.

On Wednesday July 23rd, for the first time since 1993, the Congressional House Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Armed Services Committee held an oversight hearing to review the military’s disastrous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) law. A large coalition of organization including the Human Rights and Campaign, Service Members Legal Defense Network, but the military witnesses who testified provided the most eloquent impetus for supporting repeal of the law.

"Major General Vance Coleman (Ret.), who served in the U.S. Army for more than 30 years, told the panel about his own personal experience of being devalued for arbitrary reasons: "I know what it is like to be thought of as second-class, and I know what it is like to have your hard work dismissed because of who you are or what you look like...It is bewildering and counter-intuitive to me that we maintain a federal law that says, no matter how well a person does his or her job, no matter how integral to their unit they are, they must be removed, disrespected and dismissed because of who they happen to be, or who they happen to love."(http://www.hrcbackstory.org/)

“Staff Sergeant Eric Alva (Ret.), a dear, dear member of the HRC family, spoke of his frustration at being deemed at once a hero and unworthy of service: "I received the Purple Heart, along with visits from the President and First Lady. I was told I was a hero. That landmine may have put an end to my military career that day, but it didn't put an end to my secret. That would come years later, when I realized that I had fought and nearly died to secure rights for others that I myself was not free to enjoy. I had proudly served a country that was not proud of me."(http://www.hrcbackstory.org/)

"Captain Joan E. Darrah (Ret.), who served for nearly 30 years in the U.S. Navy, gave dramatic testimony on the immense strain of serving under DADT: "On Tuesday, September 11, I was at the Pentagon attending the weekly 8:30 intelligence briefing...When American Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, I was at the Pentagon bus stop. As it turned out, the space I had been in seven minutes earlier was completely destroyed. Seven of my co-workers were killed. The reality is that if I had been killed, my partner, then of 11 years, would have been the last to know as I had not dared to list her in my emergency contact information."(www.hrcbackstory.com/)

We can hope that sanity prevails and DADT is repealed, after all, reason and rationality have to prevail once and awhile.