Don't Ask, Do Tell

Now that Congress is Blue could there finally be a Rainbow military? That is what leaders of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), are hoping.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is a national non-profit legal services, watchdog, and policy organization dedicated to ending harassment and discrimination against military personnel affected by

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and related forms of intolerance. SLDN recently released the following statement: “We now know that every co-sponsor of legislation to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ who sought re-election appears to have been successful . . . And we also know this: Support for lifting the ban did not cause voters to reject any candidate. According to Gallup, nearly 4 out of 5 Americans support gays serving openly in the military. America is ready for change.

With Bush in the White House it seems obvious that the military needs every person willing to serve. In the November 27 issue, Newsweek reports:

". . . gay vets hope they might make some progress at a time when the military can't afford to turn away the willing and able. Last year the Pentagon discharged 742 service members for homosexuality. . ."

But making a change won't be easy: gay-rights advocates have seen a troubling signal from the Pentagon. Massachusetts Rep. Martin Meehan and the American Psychiatric Association complained last June when they learned the military's disability policy classified homosexuality as a mental disorder—something the APA stopped doing in 1973. Then the Pentagon quietly reclassified it in July. Last week Meehan and the APA complained once more: homosexuality has now been grouped with other "conditions, circumstances and defects" like bed-wetting, repeated venereal-disease infections and obesity. The reclassification is "even worse," says Aaron Belkin, who studies gays in the military at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Now [homosexuality] is explicitly deemed to be a defect." Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith says the Defense Department does "not think homosexuality is a mental illness" and says the classification could be re-examined.

Maybe someone should re-examine the Pentagon for its ability to comprehend basic information -- like American Psychiatric Association classifications?

It's time for the Pentagon to lift the ban on gays in the military.