A Democratic effort to repeal the don’t ask, don’t tell law that allows homosexuals to serve in the armed forces — secretly — failed Tuesday because an effort was made to load the bill with controversial amendments calculated to benefit Democrats in the Nov. 2 election.
The defeat was deserved. It would have been better to ask for a yes or no vote on the issue alone.
Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is supported by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, by President Barack Obama and by a large majority of Americans of military age.
The switch in attitudes among those 18 to 35 has been dramatic. Most males and females in the age bracket from which almost all military recruits are drawn don’t think sexual orientation should be a factor in whether a person can serve in the military. They say they would have no problem serving with gays.
Since these poll results have changed 180 degrees over the past half century, one wonders why. The apparent answer is that homosexuals have become active in many communities, most notably on college campuses and in larger cities. Political activism and anonymity don’t go together. When gays stepped out of the shadows into public life they became real people to those around them.
In a great many cases, that new familiarity bred acceptance rather than contempt. The person in the next cubicle lost the gay label and became just another guy or gal. Sexual orientation became no more important a characteristic than size, hair color or pitch of voice, and paled beside the qualities of character sought in a work partner or friend.
The don’t ask, don’t tell law may have brought more homosexuals into the armed services. If it did, it also put them beside heterosexuals to work and fight together. Both learned that their sexual orientation didn’t determine how brave, how quick-thinking, how strong or how committed to their fellow soldiers they were.
This process of integration of homosexuals into the young heterosexual population — ages 12 through 35 — has been going on for more than a decade, which probably explains why today’s heteros — that’s about 95 percent of us — have become so much more accepting and so much less fearful and contemptuous.
Our laws should reflect that change.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
