Don't Ask, Don't Debate: Pentagon Calls for Silence on Gays

Email

Print

Share

March 02, 2007 1:27 PM

A public debate over allowing gays to serve in the military hurts the U.S. War on Terror, a top Pentagon official has asserted.

"The Global War on Terrorism is far-reaching and unrelenting," wrote David S. C. Chu, Defense Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness, in a recent letter. "A national debate on changing" the Pentagon's ban on openly gay service members would bring "divisiveness and turbulence across our country," which "will compound the burden of the war."

Chu was responding to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who had written Defense Secretary Robert Gates inviting him to reconsider the military's current policy, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Not everyone with a military background agrees that silence is best for the country. Retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton, used a January op-ed in The New York Times to announce he had reconsidered his position on the issue and believed that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly.

Key to his thinking, he explained, was that the U.S. military had been "stretched thin" by deployments throughout the Middle East, as part of the so-called "Global War on Terror."  He also noted public sentiment had shifted in recent years to be more supportive of an openness policy.

Citing Shalikashvili's article, Sen. Wyden wrote to Defense Secretary Gates in January, asking him to "revisit" the policy, known in legal parlance as "10 USC 654."

The policy "makes absolutely no sense and undermines the fight against terrorism," Wyden said in a statement. His office noted that dozens of service members with critically needed skills like Arabic proficiency have been discharged for being gay and that enforcing the policy costs hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.