US Politics: The Military, Gays and Lesbians, and the Miraculous Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

US Politics Correspondent Lee Haddigan completes his trilogy of articles on the significant moves in Congress this weekend --- Monday considered tax cuts; Tuesday looked at the DREAM Act --- with the story of the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell restriction on gays and lesbians in the US military:

Sometimes the unexpected just happens, and all you can do is shake your head and mutter "Wow".

On Sunday, in the game of the season (perhaps of many seasons) in American football, the Philadelphia Eagles produced a second "Miracle at the Meadowlands" in recent years, charging back from a 31-10 deficit with eight minutes to play. They beat the New York Giants 38-31 with a touchdown on a punt return as the game clock expired, the only time that has ever happened in the 65-year history of the National Football League. 

The previous day Congress produced its own "miracle". Having failed two weeks ago to repeal the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military, Senators JosephLieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) reintroduced the measure as a stand-alone bill. On 10 December 10, The Washington Post likened their efforts to football's desperation Hail Mary pass, and I thought their last-ditch attempt to win the game was almost certain to fail.

But as fans of Doug Flutie and the Boston College football team will attest, sometimes that last-second heave of a throw connects. On 18 December, the Senate voted 65-31, with eight Republicans supporting Democrats, to end the 17-year-old policy of DADT. Certain factors coalesced to bring repeal: opinion polls strongly in favour of removing the restriction, a report from the Pentagon indicating homosexuals did not harm troop morale, and a September ruling from a District Court Judge that the ban was unconstitutional.

The biggest story over the repeal, however, was the efforts of Harry Reid to quarterback the process through the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader from Nevada has been criticised in the past for his failure to get things done, a perception aided by his rather colourless personal charisma, but his hard-ball tactics in shepherding the measure through the Senate impressed even Republican opponents. 

During his 1992 Presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to end a ban on homosexuals serving in the U.S. military. Since that prohibition was not in a law but a Department of Defense policy directive –-- authorised by Ronald Reagan in 1982 –-- President Clinton could have overturned the ban merely by rescinding the directive. To forestall that possibility, Congress enacted federal legislation in mid-1993 preventing homosexuals from serving in America’s armed forces.

The law, 10 U.S.C. § 654 (b)(15), stated that the “presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability". President Clinton signed the legislation, which was added as a clause to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994, but on December 21, 1993, he issued Defense Directive 1304.26 as a compromise measure.

Clinton’s directive, which became known as "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell", governed the way that the military treated serving homosexuals. While open homosexuality was still a dischargeable offense, and strong evidence of gay tendencies could lead to an investigation, officials were not allowed to conduct "witch-hunts" to flush out any individuals. Alongside this "Don’t Ask" requirement, homosexuals were forbidden, on pain of discharge, from revealing or declaring their sexuality.

Contrary to the widespread perception, Clinton never colluded in Congress' ban on homosexuals serving openly. Instead, he pushed back as far as possible with the compromise resulting from his failure to overturn the  law, try to stop further brutality against homosexuals in the forces such as the murder of Petty Officer Allen R. Schindler, Jr., in 1992.

For the immediate future, DADT is still in effect, though it is highly unlikely any armed services member who steps forward now to announce their homosexuality will be discharged. In May, a compromise amendment was added to the bill to win over some wavering Senators. This requires a 60-day delay after the bill is passed for the military to determine whether it is prepared to implement the repeal. With a service-wide educational campaign planned to explain the consequences of an end to the ban, it may take up to a year before DADT is finally history.

Not surprisingly, the harshest criticism of the Senate’s about-turn on DADT has come from religious conservatives. Pat Buchanan, in "Christian Rout in the Culture War", contends that the restriction was repealed by a secularist elite in Washington and “imposed from above by people, few of whom have ever served or seen combat, but all of whom are aware of the power of the homosexual rights lobby. This is a political payoff, at the expense of our military, to a militant minority inside the Democratic Party that is demanding this as the price of that special interest's financial and political support.”

Later in the article, Buchanan returns to the theme that “elites in the academy, media, culture and the arts” had abetted in the defeat of Judeo-Christian values, and aided in a victory for “the new morality of the social revolution of the 1960s.” He then gives what are, perhaps, the more pertinent reasons why he opposes homosexuals serving in the military: “Middle America has never signed on and still regards homosexuality as an aberrant lifestyle, both socially and spiritually ruinous. To these folks, homosexuality is associated with a high incidence of disease, HIV/AIDS, early death, cultural decadence and civilizational decline.”

Nothing I can say will change Pat Buchanan’s mind. Nor will it help the nearly 13,000 homosexuals expelled from the military since 1993. But repeal of DADT marks another step on the often rocky road to acceptance of civil rights for all Americans. The decision of Congress to end the ban, rather than cravenly letting the courts resolve the issue, shows that America’s political culture --- the "rules" by which both sides of the political divide abide --- still retains the democratic vitality to make tough choices for the right reasons. As politics becomes more and more polarized in America in the future, long may that respect for the will of the people as expressed by their representatives continue.