Queer News Updates

Queer News Updates

An occasional series on what the homosexual community is up to:

DADT Survey Boycott: It’s no secret that the military considers the repeal of Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy toward gays in the military to be the worst idea to come down the pike since women were allowed in combat.

With a few notable exceptions, such as Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who endorsed the idea with the caveat that policy changes should be contingent on military review, our armed services consider repeal of DADT would be detrimental to their mission, morale, and effectiveness.

DADT simply restricts superior officers from investigating or asking if service members are gay and restricts gay service members from advertising that fact.

Both before and after the last election, Barack Obama pledged to repeal DADT and allow homosexuals to serve openly and has been vigorously agitating for that repeal to fulfill that pledge to a major constituency. Such repeal would be a political and social change visited on the military without regard for its consequences.

In an effort to complete Admiral Mullins’ policy review on those consequences, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authorized a survey on the thoughts of service members on the issue.

Having already surveyed the families of service members on their thoughts, Gates felt it reasonable to consult the 400,000 random opinions of those who would be forced to serve next to outed gays.

The survey forms had barely hit the mailboxes when a homosexual group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, called it biased and instructed gays not to participate for fear of being outed saying, ”At this time SLDN cannot recommend that lesbian, gay, or bisexual service members participate in any survey being administered by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon Working Group or any third-party contractors:” http://tiny.cc/ywp2z

Their reasoning is obvious. They want to discredit a survey that asks straightforward answers to questions such as: “If Don’t Ask, Don’t tell is repealed and you are working with a Service member in your immediate unit who has said he or she is gay or lesbian, how would that affect your own ability to fulfill your mission during combat?” . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1780)