Okay .. I am up enjoying the view of the lunar eclipse on the balcony with my wife as well as tea and angel fruitcake .. lol .. very lovely despite the light rain. Anyway, I just read the new and apparently, the O administration has decided to repeal the law - don't ask, don't tell. So what's gonna happen now??? What are your thoughts? Do you think it's good?
I personally don't think it's going to make much of a difference one way or the other. It was a much bigger deal when Truman's executive order integrated the US military back in 1948. This in turn led to the much better remembered civil rights fight of Brown v Board of Ed (Topeka 1954) and the federal troop forced desegregation of Central High School (in Little Rock, Arkansas 1957). Gays in the military? It's not even in the same league as a story. The military has so many more important issues to deal with that frankly, what sexual orientation it's soldiers have, shouldn't even be on their agenda. The military ceded its authority by succumbing to right wing and religious extremists. It was really a reflection of these views that politically forced Clinton to draw this imperfect line in the sand, essentially to placate the GOP. The military should have said at the very beginning, that insofar as a member's personal conduct does not interfere with his or her duty and performance as a soldier, it should remain none of the military's business; the ban (DADT) thus would have been unenforceable. Institutionally, it could have just chosen to not discharge process any members unless there was a job performance or other meaningful reason. That is exactly what Obama belatedly forced the military to do when he issued new rules that the civilian authority of the military (ie the secretaries of each service) would have to ultimately sign off on each discharge. The cases of DADT violations effectively fell to zero. Had this been the way that the government handled it in the very beginning, DADT could still exist in exactly the same form but would have had no political resonance and not even be considered news in the first place.
After having served in the military, I can tell you from a personal perspective that the issue (of someone being gay or not) is actually pretty low on the list of things that I as a soldier, ever worried about. This issue, for whatever reason, seems to foster polarizing opinions more so from people who never actually worn a uniform, than from those who served. During the time that I was in, I can tell you for sure that the thing that really f.ucks up morale is the presence of a barracks thief. The next thing that killed morale is the lack of hot food. I would suppose that nowadays, with todays generation tech, the lack of internet service may well be near top of that list too. Frankly, most of the soldiers today are likely to be young, tech savvy, and probably a lot more liberal than even those of my era. So as far as I'm concerned, it's really a non issue. Rather, getting more robust vehicles that could withstand the blasts of roadside bombs would probably be near the top of my 'something to bitch about' list, if I were still in.
