The Right Time
Hearst columnist Marianne Means (pictured) has a great column in this morning's Jamestown Sun (in Jamestown, North Dakota) about the need - now - to dump "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and allow lesbian and gay troops to serve openly.
Looking back at the 1993 debate on gays in the military, Means writes that, "The fight over gays in the military was an echo of the crusade by many of the same aging macho guys to keep women away from the battlefield on grounds they would prove a distraction that would weaken the spirit of real warriors. Quaint, pea-brain stuff, but politically potent at the time."
And looking to the future, she sees sure signs of progress.
"An aggressive Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., the popular new chairman of a previously moribund House Armed Services Committee subcommittee, is going to stir the pot," Means writes. "Tauscher has said that she would hold hearings that she hoped would lead to the policy’s repeal. She promised to 'begin the necessary education process' for the change. She also denounced as 'wrongheaded' the comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace that homosexuality is immoral. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates later declined to reappoint Pace to a second term."
Now, Means concludes, is the "right time" to lift the ban.
"As violence and social turmoil escalate in Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker pleaded with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to allow him more well-qualified staff members and to ease some of her security rules," she recalls. "He complained about not enough “right people with the right skill sets.” What skill sets? Opposition to abortion, as a required job criterion in the Justice Department? Or a familiarity with Middle East culture — and even an ability to speak the language?"
"We have learned a great deal about what it means to be gay in the past two decades. It is not a moral 'choice.' It is who you are. And that doesn’t mean that you are a danger to your country and can’t be a good soldier, if that’s what moves you."
To read the full column, click here.
- Steve RallsLabels: Congress, editorials, in the news, Tauscher
-----01-18-08
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