Looking back, the policy got the job done in a psychologically sound way. The way to extinguish prejudice is to put people in contact with the object of their prejudice. Integrate schools. Hire Women as Executives. Allow Gay soldiers to serve in the military. The thing that beats prejudice is contact. Shared humanity almost always wins the day.
As I commented on friend’s blog, my own preference would’ve been for the courts to overturn the ban on homosexuals in the military a long time ago, or overturn DADT not long after it was passed. In my Eighth Grade Civics mind, the courts are the guardians of the Bill of Rights. Failing that, in my 1960s Liberal Soul, I would’ve liked to see Obama kill the DADT policy on Jan 21, 2010 by Executive Order. But I have to admit that the process, including the survey of the soldiers, has been good for us. I now think of Obama as a Congressman, and he negotiated Congress skillfully on this [and other] issues. Restoring Congress.
People-like-me have had a lot of disappointments and disagreements with Obama – the biggest one has been extending the Bush Tax Cuts. But I have to admit that he has endured the most hostile assault ever made on a new President, and held his head high. I believe he has the respect of the country and the world. That’s a remarkable accomplishment in the face of the Religious Right, Fox News, the TEA Party, the Great Recession, and the Bush years. It hasn’t gone the way I wanted it to go, but for the moment I have to admit that, given the circumstances, we’re on a reasonable track. Like many, I’m keeping my mouth shut and watching.
I was recently on the wrong side of DADT, it was a solipsistic error (I wasn’t in it for the money like, say Dr. Nemeroff) and I should by now have accumulated more finely tuned scientific wisdom to have seen it and avoided it. I’ve been working with soldiers for much of the past two years…mostly men returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have been banged up and scarred significantly enough to get themselves assigned to a Transition Battalion which means that the Army is giving them some time to figure out what to do with themselves.
So, my impression data vis a vis DADT was coming from that group and, it is noteworthy, (as least as far as my personal guilt is concerned) that the group of respondents in the DoD survey who stood apart statistically from the modal findings, were, in fact from the “combat arms” parts of the services, i.e., the Marines, the Infantry and so forth. Moreover, I was feeling protective of these folks…they were “my” soldiers and I didn’t wish that they have to do a single more thing for their country than they wanted to.
Mickey pointed out to me that he knew my heart in such matters and I believe him correct in his assessment. I never have felt it was my business or concern who a person should choose to love. And I certainly never thought it was the business of the government of the United States to be in the love business or the sex business or the marriage business or the God business or most any other kind of business outside of the public safety business with all that entails.. national security, pure foods and drugs, honest money changers, physicians who know what they are doing and do it for the right reasons…a square deal…that sort of thing. Got no business in the science business either except when “science” operates against the public health as evidenced in the unseemly medico-pharmaceutical alliances which have so thoroughly stimulated Mickey’s ire lately.
Mickey is sounding more and more like an old style Republican every day “party of Lincoln, TR, and TJ” style Republican that is. Before it became the party of Trickle- Me-Elmo and Jesus is IT.
I remember Stonewall and I’m glad that institutional obstacles to full participation in society continue to fall away. I’m not looking forward to some of the fallout of this one or even to learn what surprises are in store (gender reassignment unit at Walter Reed?) but agree that it is a necessary and values consistent move on the part of our legislators.
Mickey and I were stationed together at the same USAF place in England in the early ’70s. During our tenure, Leonard Matlovich, a decorated career non-com with a peerless record of service began his out-of-the-closet campaign from a small base just south of where we did our medic work. TSGT Matlovich got sent packing back to a stateside base in fairly short order and was eventually drummed out of the service and fell to the AIDS pandemic sometime after that. Interestingly, he had the support of most of us non-career types which was regularly evidenced in letters and editorials in the underground press that circulated around all the U.S. military facilities back then. We also worked every day with a cadre of nurses, many of them senior officers, whose sexual orientation was as obvious as it was none of our damn business. Moreover, they were good and caring and competent people. It is certainly time for our military to end discriminatory personnel practices and I’m glad of it.
btw – at Ralph’s suggestion, I read the book titled “Unfriendly Fire….” written by a Ph.D. historian on the faculty at Columbia I believe. And, for slogging through that tome and keeping an open mind, I think I must be eligible for some kind of medal!
I just wanted you to know how much your writings here on this topic are appreciated. Change is only possible when everything and everyone is brought out into the sunlight of truth for all to see. thank you
Carl,
Medal duly awarded.
I even accept the “Republican back when Republicans were Republicans” moniker. And I did vote Republican three times in my voting career. Once for Goldwater [I thought and still feel that LBJ was a crook]. Once for Henry Loeb for Mayor of Memphis [the current Mayor was hospitalized often for psychosis and bought votes openly]. Loeb was the Mayor who caused the garbage strike where MLK was killed. I regret that vote. I should’ve stuck with psychosis and graft. Then I voted against Herman Talmadge when he was in the final throes of his alcoholism and stuffing lobbyist money into shoe boxes in his closet. Another moral vote that went bad as his replacement’s voting record rivaled Cheney’s.
Keep defending your soldiers. They need our help.