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Goodbye to All That

In a recent article for National Review Online, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" proponent Elaine Donnelly takes advantage of her role as guest blogger to remind us how intellectually bankrupt the arguements for keeping the ban on lesbian and gay service members have become. Locked in a time warp, Elaine focuses much of her attention on the nature of the political debate in 1993. The result is an argument that is worn, tattered and sadly unaccepting of the realities our nation faces today. The meat of her "argument" lies within this 1994 poll which shows that 49% of respondents either favored or were neutral to President Clinton's efforts to allow gays to serve in the military. This same poll indicates that 54% of Independents, 70% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans either supported or were neutral to Clinton's "liberal agenda, like gays in the military." This means that a majority of Independents and Democrats supported allowing gays in the military as far back as 1994! She then descends into some ridiculous squabble about how we shouldn't call "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- as if this is a good enough reason to kick Arabic translators out of the service while we are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq!!! Finally she cites three (very unscientific) surveys conducted by Military Times newspapers. What she fails to point out is that the newspaper's polling (while self-selecting and heavily biased towards conservatives) goes back to 2003 and clearly shows that an increasing number of service members favor allowing gays to serve openly. Furthermore, she completely dismisses a 2006 Zogby poll which shows that 73% of military personnel “are comfortable with lesbians and gays.” Sadly, at the heart of her silliness lies a very serious problem. Elaine and her cronies, do not want to accept the reality that we are a nation fighting two simultaneous wars. She cannot accept the fact that now more than ever we need to attract our best and brightest into the armed forces so that they can become the linguists, medics, intelligence officers, and pilots we need to protect our boys and girls fighting the War on Terror. We can not afford to kick out another 12,000 service members simply because they are gay -- too many lives are on the line. The time to entertain women like Elaine Donnelly has past. The time to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is now. Click here to learn how you can get involved and help repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." -Victor Maldonado

Labels: elaine donnelly

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01-31-08