There was a much bigger brouhaha about blacks, but Truman had the cojones to issue an executive order to integrate and the army didn't dissolve into chaos.
Why are today's politicians such wussies?
This whole thing really makes me disappointed in Barack Obama. While I think this is a positive change, I can't help thinking that the senate vote was completely unnecessary.
Obama could've erased DADT with the stroke of a pen. He didn't need congressional or senate approval... he could've simply declared it void and it would've been gone. Despite this, he sat on his hands and did nothing.
This could've been one of his "quick wins" right after he took office that would've helped to set the tone for his whole administration. Instead, his inaction set the tone, IMO.
Your exactly right. I laugh when the military says it will not work. I'm thinking, it already is working, you just are not smart enough to realize you already work along side of gays and lesbians every day.
I agree.
The whole idea behind DADT was that nobody would know if a soldier was gay. It seems like those against repealing it somehow decided that if they can't see that there are homosexual people in the military, then they can pretend they're not there at all... and based all their arguments on that.
In reality, I think that DADT creates an environment where the logical thing would be to suspect that any and every soldier
might be gay. If the idea of serving with a gay man or a lesbian woman in your unit is somehow a threat to morale (not that I think it is, but that's what's being argued), then I would think that the situation with DADT would be "worse" than with it.
Openness prevents fear and suspicion. There's more fodder for rumour if you're surrounded by people you
suspect are gay than if you serve with one or two that you
know are gay.
