Regardless of whether the stoppage of don't ask, don't tell (DADT) enacted by U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips last week sticks, one thing is certain: DADT is wrong and dehumanizing.
DADT has been in effect for more than 17 years.
In that time, more than 14,000 American citizens have been discharged from the American armed forces for acts or behaviors defined as homosexual.
DADT doesn't explicitly say military personnel cannot be homosexual or bisexual, but homosexual acts, which supposedly put unit morale, discipline and cohesion at risk, are strictly prohibited.
The ban initiated by Phillips led to the Pentagon allowing openly gay and lesbian recruits to be admitted into the armed forces.
For now at least.
DADT could be reinstated at some point in the future.
President Obama has said on several occasions, including in an interview with Rolling Stone, he would repeal DADT in an orderly fashion.
Obama said he would like to do away with DADT now, "but maintains his administration is obligated to defend the law even though he disagrees with it, and that he lacks the power to overturn it on his own" (from "Stay on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' ruling unlikely," Politico).
Political jargon and the continued nonsense of the American bureaucratic machine aside, DADT impinges on the basic human rights our great nation was founded on and supposedly upholds and defends today.
Of course, history has shown not every American citizen has always been extended these basic rights.
Blacks were once considered 3/5s of a human being. Women couldn't vote until 1920. Japanese Americans were held in internment camps, which were more or less prisons during World War II.
Et cetera and et cetera.
DADT is no different from these earlier errors in judgment. One day, in the not-so-distant future, the discrimination against those of "non-normal" sexual orientation will be viewed in a similar light.
It's yet another discriminatory outcry against the different. It's fear and cowardice.
It's an attempted splitting of personality and self-hood.
Gays, lesbians and bisexuals who want to serve, and perhaps die for, their country have to deny who they are.
A cadet in Auburn's ROTC program, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: "It gets kind of upsetting sometimes. Mainly because there are a lot of events that people bring girlfriends or boyfriends to, or husbands or wives for that matter, but I won't be able to bring my boyfriend there because that would be unacceptable" (from "The Invisible Wall of Don't Ask, Don't Tell," A1).
It's just plain wrong.
Maybe DADT was necessary or at least understandable when it was first implemented in the early '90s.
Perhaps back then the uproar would've been a distraction and negatively impacted troops and the morale of the armed forces.
But we are past that now.
We should now be able to move past petty prejudices and accept people as they are--straight, gay, bisexual, transsexual, whatever.
If you want to take up a weapon, man a computer or heal the wounded in service of your country, your sexual orientation or preference should not play a role.
Not asking questions and pretending homosexual men and women aren't currently serving America in its armed forces, pretending they don't deserve the same rights as non-homosexuals, is a disservice to the ideals America was founded on.
It's time, past time, we treated them as equals.
First step: abolish don't ask, don't tell.
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