Words.
"Back during the initial fuss about "don't ask, don't tell," I went over to the Pentagon to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We mostly discussed the situation in the Balkans and the pressure on President Bill Clinton to militarily intervene. Then I asked about gays in the military and the chairman, who was opposed, asked me what I thought the reaction would be if two male soldiers took to the dance floor at some military base. No different, I answered, than if a black man danced with a white woman at the same base about 50 years earlier. Colin Powell seemed taken aback and I thought, naively, that "don't ask don't tell" was doomed.
Now it is 16 years later and "don't ask, don't tell" is still the law of the land. Since 1993, more than 13,000 troops have been discharged for being gay. Last year, 619 military personnel got the boot, a number that has held more or less constant in recent years. Some of them had invaluable specialties, such as fluency in Arabic.
In the view of many present and former military officers, changing the policy to allow openly gay people to serve would prove a disaster. In a letter to President Obama, more than 1,000 of them argued that valuable officers and noncoms would leave the services if gays were tolerated, while concerned parents would withhold permission for their sons or daughters to enlist if, God forbid, homosexuals were openly in the ranks. This is nonsense."
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