Gays serve in militaries around the world, although several countries (including the U.S. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy) prohibit service by openly gay soldiers and sailors.
Washington Post, Posted: 2/23/2010, 5:59 PM Top Army and Air Force officers said Tuesday they would be reluctant to overturn a 17-year policy that prohibits gays from serving openly in the military without more time to ascertain it won't hurt the services. "I do have serious concerns about the impact of a repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight and a half years," Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey told Congress. "We just don't know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness." As Casey cautioned the Senate Armed Services Committee against moving too fast to repeal the law, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz made similar remarks before the House. The carefully crafted comments indicate reluctance among the military's senior ranks to act anytime soon on President Barack Obama's plan to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Obama says the policy is wrongheaded and should change. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agrees but wants to move slowly, and has ordered a lengthy assessment on how to lift the ban without affecting troops and their families.
Washington Post, Posted: 2/23/2010, 1:25 PM The Army's top uniformed officer said Tuesday that he has "serious concerns" about overturning a 17-year policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military and supports a yearlong study into the matter before any changes are made. The carefully crafted comments by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey to the Senate Armed Services Committee indicate reluctance by some within the military's senior ranks to President Barack Obama's plan to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." Obama says the policy is wrongheaded and should change. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agrees but wants to move slowly, and has tasked a lengthy assessment on how to lift the ban without affecting the force. Casey's testimony as a service chief is considered crucial to the debate. As the top uniformed officials in each service, a service chief is in charge of recruitment and preparing troops for deployments. If the policy on gays is overturned, the chiefs would have to decide how to implement the changes.
New York Times, Posted: 2/22/2010, 4:33 PM A comprehensive new study on foreign militaries that have made transitions to allowing openly gay service members concludes that a speedy implementation of the change is not disruptive. The finding is in direct opposition to the stated views of Pentagon leaders, who say repealing a ban on openly gay men and women in the United States armed forces should take a year or more. The study, “Gays in Foreign Militaries 2010: A Global Primer,” is to be released Tuesday by the Palm Center, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Palm Center has no official position on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the American law that bans openly gay service members, but the group has become a leading force among advocates for repeal. The principal author of the study is Nathaniel Frank, who also wrote the book “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America.” The 151-page study, which updates existing studies on gay service members in Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and other countries, offers the first broad look at the issue in foreign militaries since Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” earlier this month.
New York Daily News, Posted: 2/22/2010, 11:49 AM Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) will announce this week that he's taking the lead on repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the 1993 law that prohibits gay people from serving openly in the armed forces. Lieberman said his commitment to repealing DADT is twofold. First, allowing gays to serve openly fulfills the bedrock American promise of providing citizens with "an equal opportunity to do whatever job their talents and sense of purpose and motivations lead them to want to do - including military service." Second, and no less important for a lawmaker whose commitment to national security the Pentagon can't doubt, is that "When you artificially limit the pool of people who can enlist then you are diminishing military effectiveness." Lieberman disputes the claim that allowing gay people to serve openly would cause havoc within the ranks. "My own experience as a member of the Armed Services Committee, visiting our troops on bases here in this country and abroad, particularly in war zones, the most remarkable quality you'll find is unit cohesion," he told me. "What matters is not the gender of the other person in your unit or the color or the religion or in this case the sexual orientation. It's whether that person is a good soldier you can depend on. And that's why I think it's going to work."
MSNBC, Posted: 2/21/2010, 4:07 PM *VIDEO after the jump*: Top U.S. Army General David Petraeus was asked about “don’t ask, don’t tell” on Meet the Press and spent the bulk of the time praising the year-long review process which will determine if the ban on gay and lesbian troops serving openly in the military should be lifted. Petraeus stopped short of saying whether or not he felt “don’t ask, don’t tell should be overturned and said he wasn’t sure how the majority of soldiers felt. “We have experienced certainly in the FBI and the CIA… I know. I’ve served in combat with individuals who were gay and who were lesbian in combat situations, and frankly, over time, you say, ‘How is his shooting?,’ or, ‘How is her analysis?’”
Associated Press (AP), Posted: 2/21/2010, 2:21 PM Lawmakers this week will press the military's top uniformed officers for the first time on whether they think repealing "don't ask, don't tell" makes sense or would be too disruptive. The testimony from each of the service chiefs on Capitol Hill will be crucial to the debate in Congress on whether to repeal the 17-year-old law, which bans gays from serving openly in the military. President Barack Obama says the policy unfairly punishes patriots who want to serve their country. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agrees and has begun a yearlong study on how to mitigate the impact of lifting the ban. Providing much-needed political cover is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who has said he thinks the law unfairly forces gay troops to compromise their integrity by lying about who they are. But lawmakers, who are divided on whether to end the ban, say they want to hear from the service chiefs. They are the ones who would be in charge of putting any changes in place and responding to any fallout.
McClatchy Newspapers, Posted: 2/17/2010, 1:15 AM Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nearing the end of a 25-minute question and answer session with troops serving here when he raised a topic of his own: "No one's asked me about 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" he said. As it turned out, none of the two dozen or so men or women who met with Mullen at Marine House in the Jordanian capital Tuesday had any questions on the 17-year-old policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military — or Mullen's public advocacy of its repeal. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Darryl E. Robinson, who's the operations coordinator for defense attache's office at the U.S. Embassy here, explained why after the session. "The U.S. military was always at the forefront of social change," he said. "We didn't wait for laws to change." Those gathered at Marine House made it clear they've already accepted the idea of gays and lesbians serving among them.
MetroWeekly (D.C.), Posted: 2/16/2010, 5:02 AM While most of the Washington, D.C., area was checking the time for the next snowball fight, the Office of Personnel Management closed federal offices in the capital area for most of the past week. The scheduled Senate hearing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which was to take place on Feb. 11, was canceled. As of Friday afternoon, Feb. 12, a spokesperson from the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the hearing had not yet been rescheduled and noted that the upcoming hearing schedule for the committee was quite full. The cancellation did not, however, stop Servicemembers United from circulating a legislative proposal that would integrate the immediate legislative repeal sought by LGBT advocates and the review time on the implementation of a repeal sought by the Pentagon. The proposal sets forth what it calls the “Set End-date/Delayed Implementation” (SEDI) model for the repeal.
D.C. Agenda, Posted: 2/14/2010, 3:18 PM *VIDEO available after jump*: Former Vice President Richard Cheney on Sunday predicted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will “be changed” and expressed support for reconsideration of the law now that top defense officials have come out against it. “And when the chiefs come forward and say, ‘We think we can do it,’ then it strikes me as it’s time to reconsider the policy, and I think Adm. Mullen said that,” Cheney said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” Asked about the issue on “This Week” by guest host Jonathan Karl, Cheney said the U.S. military supported “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993 when the law banning open service was put in place, but said “things have changed, significantly, since then” and predicted the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as it currently stands. “I see that … Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint of Chiefs of Staff, has indicated he is belief that we ought to support change in the policy, so I think that — my guess is the policy will be changed,” Cheney said. When Karl pressed Cheney further on whether he personally supports repeal, Cheney said said “it’s partly a generational issue” and he’s “reluctant to second guess the military” because “they’re the ones that have got to make the judgment on how these policies affect the military capability of our units.”
Associated Press (AP), Posted: 2/14/2010, 2:30 PM An organization representing military reservists voted to rescind its previous call to exclude all gays and lesbians from serving in the military. The Reserve Officers Association of the United States voted Wednesday to abandon their previous stance, but members did not officially agree to back President Barack Obama's directive calling to put an end to "don't ask, don't tell." “While our membership voted down a position supporting the current law, our actions fell short of endorsing the administration’s current position that would allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military,” retired Rear Admiral Paul T. Kayye, ROA president, said in a statement. “No inference should be made as to the association’s position as we do not currently have one on this issue." Kayye added that the members felt the issue should be "resolved by currently serving military leaders."
Politico, Posted: 5/26/2010, 3:01 PM
QUICK LOOK:By MAJ. PETER KEES HAMSTRA & LEIF OHLSON & LT. COM. CRAIG JONES: As openly gay officers with decades of combined service experience in the British, Dutch and Swedish armed forces, we are closely watching U.S. developments around the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell." We were just in Washington at a Brookings Institution/Palm Center conference, where representatives from the world's militaries discussed this matter. Though we maintain a respect for the American people, their military and their political process, we share a sense of puzzlement — and a sort of shock — at the rhetoric we heard surrounding "Don't ask, don't tell." As Congress prepares to vote on this, we hope our international perspective can be of some value. The U.S. armed forces are the world's most formidable, with an unrivaled might and a readiness to accept worldwide deployments to engage in a range of military conflicts that no other nation views with the same sort of international responsibility. Yet it is also true that U.S. military power depends, in most cases, on an international coalition of partners. Members of Congress don't always seem to appreciate that America's allies are put off in serious ways by the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. For example, units of our own or other armed forces have refused to deploy in some joint operations with U.S. forces because gay service members would not work with the Americans — for fear of hostile reactions.
Washington Post, Posted: 4/20/2010, 8:03 PM
QUICK LOOK:BY JONATHAN CAPEHART: President Obama flew out to California to help the sagging reelection effort of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and came face-to-face with frustration over efforts to repeal the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. He was interrupted a couple of times during his rah-rah for Boxer, in fact. Now, here's my frustration: These same protesters don't bother to interrupt fundraisers and other events for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). With Obama out, loud and proud in his support for repeal of "don't ask don't tell," those congressional leaders are the ones who hold the key to it actually happening. And they are content to let Obama take all the heat. Hammering away at Obama on this issue is understandable. During the campaign, he promised to do away with the law that hurts the nation's military effectiveness. (I mean, how effective can the U.S. be in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the war on terror if it's booting desperately needed Arab linguists simply because of who they are?) But I must remind my gay brothers and sisters that Obama is not king. Don't ask don't tell is an act of Congress. And it will take Congress to permanently do away with it. Gay men and lesbians are right to hold Obama's feet to the fire on this. But by continuing to ignore Pelosi and Reid, not only are they giving them a pass the leaders don't deserve, they are also slowing down a resolution to an honorable cause.
Posted: 3/26/2010, 12:06 PM
QUICK LOOK:It's been one year since Lt. Dan Choi came out of the closet very publicly to challenge the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy on gays in the military. An Arab linguist now facing discharge, Choi was back in the headlines last week when he showed up at a Human Rights Campaign rally featuring comedienne Kathy Griffin and, according to some, "hijacked" the event by asking those present to join him for a short two-block walk to the White House, where he handcuffed himself to the fence in a protest of civil disobedience. He spent the night in jail but was back out protesting over the weekend, joining the LGBT contingent in the large immigration rights rally on the National Mall. One year after it all started, Choi went back on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to talk about the latest developments in DADT repeal.
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