It's Time!

Today (Thursday, December 2, 2010) the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee is holding hearings to gather information prior to voting on the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"--the flawed policy which has (so far) resulted in almost 14,000 men and women being cashiered out of various military branches of service. 

In the HuffingtonPost coverage, one of the most significant items to come out of the live blog of the hearings (so far) was the "split" by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman whose passionate argument was simple, yet eloquent:

"In our time, one of the great transitions occurring is the growing readiness and understanding among the American people that you simply -- it's just wrong and un-American to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation."

Although I've certainly had my differences with Senator Lieberman in the past (particularly over his decision to support fellow Senator John McCain during the 2008 presidential election), I've got to say that the statement (above) redeems him in my eyes--and not just because he agrees with my position.

On Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program yesterday she ran down the parallels between President Harry S Truman's executive order ending segregation of the races in post WW2 1945. In so many ways, integrating the U.S. military services racially is equivalent to finally integrating the services as far as sexual orientation. In the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11/2001, there was an urgent need for Arabic-speaking translators )to scan the growing flood of message traffic about possible future attack plans). Yet almost 60 Arabic speakers (along with 9 gay Farsi speakers) have been discharged from the military (through June 2009) despite a dire shortage of translators for those languages. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! A policy which values adherence more to policy than to realistic need (not to mention being in step with other major militaries of the world who have "advanced" to include lesbian and gay member in their ranks) is a flawed policy and it's time for that to end!

Finally, I would cite the 38 countries that (so far) have removed restrictions from gay and lesbian citizens from serving in their ranks: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Bermuda and Uruguay. LOOK AT THIS LIST! Does the United States count itself among the civilized nations of the world? Can the Russian and South African militaries be more advanced than ours in their thinking!?

It's time--NOW!!--for this flawed policy to end.