Offering a Christmas present to the brave men and women who have been forced to lie in order serve our country the Senate has voted by a margin of 65-31 to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

This is of course not the end of the process, the bill still has to be signed by the President and it will then take some time for the military to change their own rules to comply.

But at last we are moving one more step towards truth and integrity in our armed forces. Up until now people have been forced to lie in order to serve. Indeed the DADT policy itself has put these people in the position of being ordered to violate the very Code of Conduct they are ordered to obey.

Of course we will have those who insist that this will destroy the military and that all of the best in the armed forces will leave. Of course the same arguments were made 60 years ago when President Truman desegregated the military. The idea that whites would *gasp* have to sleep in the same room with blacks was going to destroy everything.

Somehow that didn’t pan out and we managed to get one of the best Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the person of General Powell. Overseas our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and Italy (to name a few) somehow managed to allow open service and things haven’t fallen apart.

That is unless someone wants to go tell a Royal Marine that he’s somehow no longer a real soldier (I wouldn’t advise it unless your health plan is paid up).

Or perhaps you’d like to go tell the Israeli Defense Force that they aren’t able to function properly. They have had gays serving openly for almost *twenty years* without problems.

Or maybe Germany and Italy couldn’t handle it… oh wait they have.

The simple fact of the matter is that gays and lesbians ARE serving in the armed forces right now. Not only are they serving but in many cases they are serving with a wink and a nod. You don’t sleep in the same barracks and spend 24/7 with a person without getting to know them. Their brothers and sisters in arms know, or at least strongly suspect, they are gay and in most cases they don’t care.

They are fighting, bleeding and dying for our nation and it’s about time we allowed them some of the freedom and equality they are serving to protect.