There Are Practical Problems With Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? You Don’t Say.

18 Oct, 2010 by John Hawkins

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Over at the New York Times, they’re outrageously OUTRAGED that there might be any sort of real world consequences to ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy:

Although President Obama and the Pentagon’s top leaders have all said they want the law repealed, the Justice Department on Thursday asked Judge Phillips to stay her injunction while it files an appeal.

As justification, the administration made overheated claims that a precipitous change in wartime would have adverse effects on morale, good order, discipline and unit cohesion. Those are the same specious arguments used to justify the benighted policy in the first place. The administration wants to leave it in place while it finishes a study on how to carry out a repeal.

Clifford Stanley, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a court filing that ending the antigay policy would require training, and reworking regulations on issues like housing, benefits and standards of conduct. He said the Army had to consider the “rights and obligations of the chaplain corps.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the military had to consider whether barracks should be segregated and whether partners of gay soldiers should have benefits.

This sounds disturbingly like the creation of a “separate but equal” system. The armed forces do not need to be protected from their gay and lesbian personnel. The military has always had its own culture and rules of behavior, but it has not been living in a cave.

Judge Phillips has hit on a simpler, more equitable solution: just stop enforcing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” It has done more to harm military readiness than her injunction possibly could.

These liberals, who care nothing at all about the troops or the effectiveness of the military, just want to stomp their little feet and demand that the military allow gays to openly serve in the military. Despite the fact the military has been saying for YEARS that allowing gays in the military “would have adverse effects on morale, good order, discipline and unit cohesion,” this has been brushed aside as baseless bigotry by ignorant people who know about as much about the military as Barack Obama knows about modesty.

Of course, because of what it does, the military has to deal with the real world.

In the real world, the biggest problem is that there’s very little privacy and most normal heterosexual males don’t want to sleep, shower, and share close quarters with a man who may be attracted to them. There’s nothing bigoted or homophobic about that at all. To the contrary, it’s normal and instinctive. It’s the same reason we don’t have men and women bunking together. It’s also why so many people who actually care about the troops and maintaining a top notch fighting force don’t want gays in the military. It’s not because gays are bad people or incapable of serving as well as straights, but because having openly gay soldiers presents practical problems given the sort of conditions the military has to deal with.

Quite frankly, we’d be better off if gays weren’t allowed to serve in the military. If they are allowed to serve, then at a minimum, heterosexual soldiers should be given the option to be quartered in different barracks if they choose. That’s common sense, something that’s not so common amongst supporters of having gays in the military.