Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Don't Ask Don't Tell

I'm really tired of reading liberal bloggers moan about the policy review of Don't Ask Don't Tell. It seems to some of them that our country has a myriad of other issues to deal with at the moment and playing around with military social policy is an unwise way to spend time. I couldn't agree more. There's no reason this debate should have been raging for 17 years! President Bill Clinton should have just signed an executive order in early 1993 to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. I doubt Congress would have circumvented that policy at the time. If they did, we'd be no worse off than we are now.

It's time to end this ridiculous policy. Affording American citizens equal rights shouldn't take a back burner to any issue!

Check out one well thought out argument to keep the ban in affect:

At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) expressed his concern that repealing the rule would pave the way for allowing "alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art" in the military -- and that the army must "exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create unacceptable risk to the armed forces' high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion."

So let me get this straight (no pun intended), we wouldn't want military personnel (1) drinking, (2) screwing around, and (3) getting tattoos? Only gay military personnel would do this or influence this? Is Senator Chambliss for real? He really sounds like he should be representing the great state of Oklahoma along with Senator Inhofe and Coburn. So I guess the expression about a drunken sailor on shore leave getting a tattoo was really in reference to a fag whenever it was coined? Whatever.

You know what? There will always be groups of people in the country who don't like other groups of people for a multitude of reasons. Are we to deny African-Americans, people of Jewish or Muslim faith, or women from serving in the military because it might make Bubba from Georgia uncomfortable? People with a homosexual orientation deserve the same right and responsibility to serve their country with the same rules applied to it as their heterosexual counterparts. Any other thinking is un-American!

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