Repeal ‘don’t ask’ law

Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

The Senate is expected to vote as early as today on a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which bars openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the military.

The House voted in May to repeal the 1993 law, but the measure has been held up by Senate Republicans, who have said they are concerned about how repealing the law would affect the troops. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said this year he wanted a vote on the issue put off until after the Pentagon completed a study on what a repeal would do to combat readiness.

The Pentagon’s report is done, and it concluded that repealing the law would do little to affect troop readiness. In fact, most of the troops interviewed for the report indicated they didn’t think it would be a problem. A majority of them said they had served with someone who was believed to be gay or lesbian and it didn’t bother them or affect their units’ effectiveness.

For example, the report quotes a special operations soldier, who said, “We have a gay guy (in the unit). He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.”

That’s the crux of the matter — it should be about performance, not orientation. But that hasn’t placated many Republicans, particularly Sen. John McCain of Arizona. McCain has criticized the study and questioned its validity.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have defended the report, which presents a thorough examination of the issue, and support repealing the law. Mullen told a Senate committee that the Pentagon looked at militaries in 35 other countries that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly and found that there was never an instance of “widespread panic or mass resignations or wholesale disregard for discipline and restraint” because of the policy. He noted that some of those militaries have worked with American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Gay or straight, their troops patrolled with ours and bled with ours,” he said. “They have certainly shared with ours the fear and loneliness and the horror of combat. I don’t recall a single instance where the fact that one of them might be openly gay ever led to poor performance on the field of battle.”

The reality is that gay and lesbian soldiers are just like anyone else. Pentagon officials talked to some of the 14,000 gay and lesbian soldiers who had been discharged under the law and they shared “many of the same values that we heard over and over again from service members at large — love of country, honor, respect, integrity, and service over self. We simply cannot square the reality of these people with the perceptions about ‘open’ service.”

A federal judge this year declared the law to be unconstitutional, and the Senate should vote to repeal it. Anyone who can serve honorably should be allowed to do so.