Saturday, January 24, 2009
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Bearing Unexpected Fruit - Clinton's Questionable Order Deserves a New Look
Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton changed the policy on homosexuals in the military and angered virtually everyone in America. Conservatives who didn't think our boys should be forced to share barracks with gays were outraged that Clinton was letting them into the military at all; gay-rights supporters were equally upset by what they perceived as a cop-out that allowed homosexuals to serve in the military but still said it wasn't quite okay and that they'd better keep quiet about it.
But cultural change doesn't happen overnight: it usually happens in baby steps. A representative said earlier this week that President Barack Obama would change that policy. He said it unequivocally.
But more interesting than the announcement itself was the context in which I saw it announced. This brief introduction on Opposing Views reveals that President Obama is operating in a very different cultural context from that in which the Clinton order took effect.
That introduction says in part:
"Don't ask, don't tell" prohibits anyone who "demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, as it "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." This policy of forbidding homosexuals to disclose their sexual orientation has proven extremely controversial over the years, and now it looks as though its days might be numbered.
Of course, if you were politically aware in the 90s, you know that's not entirely true--"don't ask, don't tell" scaled back a previous military policy that simply didn't allow homosexuals to serve, period. And a lot of Americans thought that was outrageous. In less than two decades, the debate has changed radically--the idea that homosexuals shouldn't be serving in the military has given way to a debate over how that should occur. That's a big change for a relatively short period in history.
Maybe it's time for everyone--including the Clinton camp, which has long acknowledged "don't ask, don't tell" as a misstep--needs to re-evaluate the order in its historical context and think of it as a foundation.
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2 comments:
As much as it frustrates those of us on the left, those of us with gay friends and families and certainly those who are gay themselves, this was something that had to happen incrementally,
A lot of people are frightened of anything but the status quo, we know the outcomes of everything we have always done, for better or worse it is a known quantity. Doing something different will result in an unknown result and it is the unknown that makes people uncomfortable.
I was far less politically savvy when DADT was brought into law, but even then I knew that it was just going to be a launch pad for further acceptance of gays in the military. Whilst the truly terrible side of DADT was that gays had to hide their real selves, while living in fear of being discovered, it also meant that it became a hell of a lot harder for detractors to say that gay men and women are incapable of service for whatever reason because we know that some of the fantastic service men and women who are out there are gay, we just don't know who.
The culture of the US military is as old as the military itself and is built on military history and tradition going back centuries, no one person, least of all one who had never served in uniform, would be able to make such a sweeping change in a single step. So President Clinton made the only change he could make with the hope that the culture would evolve enough that the next step could be made.
Honestly, I'm a little suprised (not that suprised though) that President Bush didn't go against the base and allow openly gay people serve at home, in desk jobs, like translators and the such. Such a move would have saved him a lot of heartache, the US army has very few Arabic and Farsi translators, yet they still sacked several under DADT.
I certainly saw Clinton's policy as the best that could be achieved in 1992, and as a small step towards less discrimination. If nothing else, it forbade witch hunts. It banned sniffing around people's bedrooms.
Clinton's mistake at the time was to push it through at the very beginning of his tenure, before he had a solid relationship with the military leadership. His other mistake was losing so much credibility over Lewinsky, so that a further change in policy near the end of his tenure was apparently no longer an option.
I'm glad Obama will do something. I'm also glad he hasn't tried to do it in the first few weeks, as he works his way into his role as commander in chief. Politico has an interesting article today about the independence with which he seems to be approaching military policy.
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