Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

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CNN is reporting that the Secretary of Defense is looking at “selectively enforcing” the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Gates says he is now looking at ways to make the ban “more humane” including letting people serve who may have been outed due to vengeance or a jilted lover. The remarks were made in a transcript released Tuesday by the Pentagon.

SNIP

“What we have is a law — be it a policy or a regulation — and as I discovered when I got into it, it’s a very prescriptive law. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination for a lot of flexibility. And so one of the things we’re looking at — is there flexibility in how we apply this law.”

The secretary appears to be proposing interim measures. “If somebody is outed by a third party … does that force us to take an action? And I don’t know the answer to that, and I don’t want to pretend to. But that’s the kind of thing we’re looking at to see if there’s at least a more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed.”

The military has argued that allowing gays to serve openly is bad for morale and enlistment.  Doesn’t this hold true even if they are outed?  As several retired military officials argued in the Washington Post in April…

In our experience, and that of more than 1,000 retired flag and general officers who have joined us in signing an open letter to President Obama and Congress, repeal of this law would prompt many dedicated people to leave the military. Polling by Military Times of its active-duty subscribers over the past four years indicates that 58 percent have consistently opposed repeal. In its most recent survey, 10 percent said they would not reenlist if that happened, and 14 percent said they would consider leaving.

If just the lesser number left the military, our active-duty, reserve and National Guard forces would lose 228,600 people — more than the total of today’s active-duty Marine Corps. Losses of even a few thousand sergeants, petty officers and experienced mid-grade officers, when we are trying to expand the Army and Marine Corps, could be crippling.

And the damage would not stop there. Legislation introduced to repeal Section 654 (H.R. 1283) would impose on commanders a radical policy that mandates “nondiscrimination” against “homosexuality, or bisexuality, whether the orientation is real or perceived.” Mandatory training classes and judicial proceedings would consume valuable time defining that language. Team cohesion and concentration on missions would suffer if our troops had to live in close quarters with others who could be sexually attracted to them.

If gays and lesbians pose this mortal danger (as argued by the military) and if the Obama administration has to enforce the laws of the land (execept for a despicable immigration law and provisions in a war-funding bill the president signed into law last week), then why bend the rules for LGBT servicemen who are outed?  Is this a serious, thoughtful policy change?  Or more crumbs for the gay community to get us to shut up?  Apparently, a party at the White House with POTUS and FLOTUS and movement on the HIV travel ban (as if AIDS is still a gay disease) wasn’t enough to placate the uppity homos, so maybe relaxing DADT an eency, weency, teeny little bit might chill us out.

Maybe not.

This post was submitted by psychodrew.