Defense Secretary Robert Gates is close to announcing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell changes:
“I think he is prepared to offer a way ahead on that subject this week,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Tuesday.
Gates will address “the changes that he is going to be making to the department’s policy to provide for a more humane enforcement and application of the law,” Morrell said.
Gates directed the Pentagon’s legal counsel in February to explore ways to relax enforcement of the law commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The Christian Science Monitor says repeal is at least a year off. John Aravosis clarifies that the question DOD is looking at is if, rather than how, to repeal DADT.
Newsweek has published an interview with National Guard Lieutenant Dan Choi on his arrest over DADT:
When you walked into the courtroom after your night in jail, you were in uniform, handcuffed with a chain around your waist. You are a West Point graduate and Army lieutenant, how did you reach this point?
Being in chains, for me, matched what was in my heart the whole time I was serving and was closeted. Harriet Tubman once said she had freed 1,000 slaves but could have freed so many more if they only knew that they were slaves. People don’t always know that they are in fetters. Even my feet were shackled so I could only take small steps forward. To me that symbolizes what it is to live under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the only law that enforces shame. Those chains symbolized how my country is trying to restrict my movement, how we are only allowed incremental, tiny steps.
Joe Sudbay, of AMERICAblog Gay, notes that even Larry King’s milquetoast interview last night exposed the absurdity of Mitt Romney’s opposition to DADT:
KING: Some other things. Gays in the military, where do you stand?
ROMNEY: My view is that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy should be kept in place until conflict is over, at least until that time. And when — we’re in the middle of a war. I don’t think it’s time to be experimenting with a new social policy. I think that would be potentially difficult for our troops. Let us consider those changes when we’re at peace.
KING: Because what would happen at war? What would happen if someone in Afghanistan said I’m gay?
ROMNEY: I think it’s complicates the fulfillment of our mission in the various theaters to change a policy of that nature in the middle of wartime. And that’s something that I think can wait until after a war is complete.
And remember this survey finding that a vast majority of recent US military veterans would accept the repeal of the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Only 25 percent said they would find it unacceptable.
Note: I corrected my hastily posted headline by adding “to be.” Sorry for any confusion.