The public favors allowing gays to serve openly in the military, and so do our soldiers.
The civilian and military leaders of the nation’s armed forces urged Congress Tuesday to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy based on a survey showing that most troops are okay with gays serving openly.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was a simple matter of right and wrong: “A policy that requires people to lie about themselves to me seems fundamentally flawed,” Gates said.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said getting rid of DADT would not have a major impact on morale or readiness as many feared: “This is a policy that we can do and we can do it in a relatively low-risk fashion.”
Mullen and Gates spoke at a Pentagon briefing on a massive survey of active duty troops that showed 70% believe a repeal of DADT would have either a positive effect or no effect on their ability to complete missions.
That 70 percent is in line with the public’s opinion on DADT. Republicans have exploited small-minded moralists for years, and they’re not about to turn against them now. Rest assured that will cost the party in years to come.
DADT stays until the president steps in with an executive order — the smart move morally AND politically.
Related Articles
- Pentagon Asks for Repeal of ‘DADT’; Most Troops OK With Gays in Service (politicsdaily.com)
- Gates Urges Repeal, Says Survey Shows No Big Deal To Repealing DADT (lezgetreal.com)
Get Bradley Manning on the phone.
What does Bradley Manning have to do with this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
while the law clearly had no leg to stand on anymore, i don’t think the right path to get rid of it is an executive order. congress needs to admit it was wrong and repeal it themselves. also, obama signing an executive order will just give some people to say he is overstepping his power. hopefully we can get this law behind us by the end of the year.
Bradley Manning is gay/homosexual, aint he?
So if he’d been black we should ban all African-Americans from service? That’s fucking absurd.
“Manning had social difficulties in the Army, which were attributed to the problems of being homosexual under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”
So much for serving honorably by exposing secret documents.
Manning is a pussy who belongs in the brig. But using his behavior to indict all gay service people is nothing short of ignorant.
Black doesn’t rub off, etc.
Do U NO YOO are a moron?
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40325
Even if I am a moron I am not wrong.
The Ann Coulter rebuttal. Brilliant.
Your ignorance doesn’t speak well for Lehigh.
“Byron York: What the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell report really says:
…the Pentagon team asked service members “who have been deployed at some point and been in combat environment since September 11, 2001″:
If Don’t Ask, Don’t tell is repealed and you are working with a service member in your immediate unit who has said he or she is gay or lesbian, how, if at all, would it affect your immediate unit’s effectiveness at completing its mission in a field environment or out to sea?
The differences are striking. Just 11 percent say repeal would have a positive effect, while 44 percent say it would have a negative effect. Twenty six percent of those surveyed say it would have equally positive and negative effects, and 19 percent say it would have no effect.
Break down the numbers by service branch, and the results are even more striking. Fifty-nine percent of Marines who have been in combat say repeal would have a negative effect, and just 11 percent say it would have no effect. Forty-five percent of Army respondents say it would have a negative effect. The opposition is less intense in the Navy and Air Force, where 35 percent and 41 percent say repeal would have a negative effect, but those are still significant minorities.
And these are large groups. According to the study, 70 percent of respondents are now or have been deployed, and 83 percent of them have been in a combat zone or an area where they received hostile fire pay. There is simply no way to argue that they overwhelmingly support repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
So the grunts run the military now? Maybe we should poll the service men and women next time we go to war.
“The public favors allowing gays to serve openly in the military, and so do our soldiers.”
Seems to me it is up to Congress and the Commander in Chief.