Crisp: Abolish don't ask, don't tell

Senator John McCain's military credentials are better than mine, but it's worth noting that ethical issues stand apart from heroism and longevity in the service, which don't automatically correspond with enlightened judgment.

On the subject of "Don't ask-don't tell," I prefer, over McCain's viewpoint, the perspective of Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose eloquent statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 2 deserves quotation:

"No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

Good news isn't plentiful these days, so it's refreshing after 17 years to see movement toward the abolishment of the ambiguous "Don't ask-don't tell" policy, which allows gays to serve in the military as long as they're willing to participate in a tacit lie.

President Obama promised to do away with this policy during his campaign, and he renewed the promise in his State of the Union address. Admiral Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are talking about the change as if it were inevitable. Congress may put up some resistance, but national polls indicate that many Americans are finally ready.

Will abolishing "Don't ask, don't tell" bring down the American military? We should give our soldiers and sailors more credit. Other civilized countries have allowed gays to serve openly in their armed forces without undue disruption. We have a different Navy today from the one I served in 40 years ago, at a time when discrimination was often practiced against women in the military and, only a few years before that, against blacks. The armed services are up to the challenge of this change.

Besides, what's the alternative to the abolishment of this policy?

When it comes to matters of discrimination against a subgroup of our citizenry, on whatever basis, we don't really stay in one place: either we go forward or we go backward. And the achievement of genuine equal treatment often involves a dangerous period of temporizing before the final step forward.

For example, the slaves were freed in 1863, but our country wandered in the wilderness of Jim Crow for many decades before the civil rights reforms of the 60s. Whether we've achieved genuine racial equality in our country is still a subject for debate, but at least we've moved in the right direction.

Maybe 17 years of temporizing with this policy provided the period of adjustment required to get the troops and our society ready to accept gays and lesbians. But the time for the next step has arrived.

The objections can be easily overstated - unit cohesion, for example, and shared showers always come up. But these objections, no different from those raised against other targets of discrimination, can and will be overcome in the service of the acceptance of fellow citizens who are entitled to the same legal rights as the rest of us.

After all, in some respects it doesn't matter how well the abolition of "Don't ask, don't tell" works. If we value freedom and equal treatment we don't have much choice but to extend it to everyone who has a right to it.

At its heart this issue isn't about gays and lesbians, at all; it's about us. If you believe homosexuality is an abominable perversion, you probably haven't read this far into the column. But it's more properly seen as a fact of nature.

Some argue that gays and lesbians do a lot to enrich the texture of human experience in the world. Very likely, but for the purposes of this argument, it doesn't really matter: they're citizens on an equal basis with the rest of us, and if they choose to serve openly in the military, the time has come to let them.

John M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail him at jcrisp@delmar.edu.