Kerry Might Review “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

He hasn’t taken a public and definitive position on the issue, but John Kerry has suggested that if he is elected president he would reevaluate the government’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military which allows gays to stay only if they keep quiet and allows for them to be kicked out if their sexual orientation is discovered.

PlanetOut reports:

"It seems to me we are losing a lot of talent for our nation in interpreters, in intelligence, in a lot of different things," Kerry said in the interview. "There must be a way for those people to serve somehow." Since "don't ask, don't tell" was adopted in 1994, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged, according to data published by the Associated Press and obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center. They included linguists, nuclear warfare experts and other key specialists.

Kerry said he was not certain the policy should be changed, saying he would "sit down with my lead commanders in the military and figure out whether there is a way to put talented people to work without running into a confrontation with unit cohesion issues and other things that I respect and understand."

Just like the military had to integrate racially and has had to admit women to more and more positions, eventually the military will have to give up its prejudice against gays and lesbians. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy admits that the presence of homosexuals is not an inherent problem and that there is nothing about gays that necessarily causes a problem. The current policy admits that, instead, a problem only arises when other people know about a servicemember’s sexual orientation. In essence, then, the problem is with other people, not the homosexual soldier or sailor.

If that is the case, then why should the homosexual servicemember be punished for a problem caused by others? If the presence of a gay or lesbian interferes with a unit’s performance and that is because of others’ reactions, then it seems to me that if anyone should be discharged it should be those who are actually causing the trouble — i.e., the bigots who are reacting negatively to the presence of a gay or lesbian in their midst. If a unit’s performance was being affected by the presence of a black man, who would be discipline: the black man or the people making trouble over it?

The answer here is obvious, but it isn’t obvious why the situation with gays and lesbians is treated differently. The only reason that can be offered, I think, is the presence of so many people who are bigots towards gays and lesbians because of their religion. Religiously motivated bigotry tends to be given a free pass, but in this case that means that others suffer for it and that simply can’t be allowed to go on.

Read More:

• Gay Rights, Gay Marriage
• Religious Right
• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry
• Evangelicalism
• Evangelical Christianity & Homosexuality