Being Naive About Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I was reading an article on the Yale Daily News about allowing ROTC on the Yale campus. ROTC has been denied access to the campus because of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy.

Tico Almeida, the writer of the article is naive if he thinks allowing ROTC back on campus will create a change in the military’s attitude towards gay members. That battle will not be won easily, and it will not be won with the military wanting to be inclusive. The military will go kicking and screaming to prevent gays from serving openly in the military, even to the point of discharging people who are vitally needed to the operation of a mission.

I’ve written on this extensively:
12/10/2003 - Army’s policy on gays catches DLI linguists
12/03/2003 - How ’Don’t Tell’ Translates
09/21/2003 - The stupidity of ’don’t ask, don’t tell’
04/16/2003 - Military Gay Linguist Firings Escalate
11/29/2002 - A letter I sent to President Bush this morning
11/27/2002 - Is Osama Less of a Threat to U.S. Than Gays?

So I guess you could say that I have a passionate view on the topic. The policy is wrong, and it should go. It would be equally wrong for Yale to allow the military recruiters on it’s campus. Yale would be giving a nod of approval to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, by doing that.

In the long run, I also suspect that more interaction between the military and our nation’s top-ranked universities -- all of which have shown strong institutional support for gay equality -- would contribute to the demise of the military’s immoral policy of discrimination. (emphasis is mine)

WRONG. The military is not going to change the way it does things until they are told to do so by their commanding officer. That is the President of the United States, the same man has said that he wants an amendment to the Constitution making it impossible for gay couples to achieve marriage. How do you think he feels about allowing gay soldiers to be open (not lie) about themselves?

If anything has gotten the attention of the government, it is a recent ruling by a Federal Appeals Court that came down in favor of a lawsuit allowing academic institutions to bar military recruiters from recruiting on their campuses. Up to that time, schools who prohibited recruiters on their campuses were told that if they didn’t allow the recruiters they would lose all their federal funding. Does that sound like they are willing to meet us half way?

Moreover, the opinions of military personnel are beginning to match those of the American public. For the first time in American history, 50 percent of junior enlisted service members say that gays should be allowed to serve openly, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Survey. However, their officer counterparts are more conservative on this issue, and those officers are the ones who work with Congress to set policy. This is exactly why progressives should be fighting to bring ROTC chapters to all of the campuses with a current ban. All of these universities are top-ranked in both academic quality and support for gay rights, and we should want more graduates of such institutions joining the military and serving as officers. (emphasis is mine)

Education has nothing to do with why the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is in place. It has to do with simple bigotry that results from the perceived lack of comfort level of the commanding officers (not necessarily the troops themselves). That is what makes this policy continue year after year. Do you think the gay linguists that were discharged from the military were discharged because they were not educated? Do you think they were discharged because they were not needed? No. They were discharged because they were gay. That’s all.

You can not fight an injustice by doing an injustice. Yale doesn’t allow the recruiters on campus because they have taken a stance that bigotry based on sexual orientation is wrong. If they allow recruiters on campus, it will be sending the message that it’s ok for the military to continue Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We’ve lost too many good soldiers to this stupid archaic policy. Caving in to let other people catch up with the rest of the “progressives” is not the answer. We must show that bigotry is wrong, every time.

It’s the same argument with gay marriage. We are told that we are going “too fast”, and to “slow down”, to let everyone catch up. Well, while everyone is “catching up” and getting “more comfortable” with gay people, people’s military careers are being ruined for absolutely no good reason.