Thursday, March 25, the military policy known as ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ which was enacted in 1993 under president Bill Clinton to ‘integrate’ gays into the military, was altered. Only Congress can appeal ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If you think the new Health Care Legislation was contentious, just revisit gays in the military as a political hot bed of contempt.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is still the policy for gays in the military in the United States. However, yesterday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the new rules that relax how a gay person serviing in the military would be eased out if their ‘openess’ became ‘open.’ Sounds like weasel words, doesn’t it? I have never totally understood ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I think it says, its ok to be gay in the military but don’t let anyone find out or they will throw your ass out. Yea, any way you cut it, that’s what the policy says. Let’s take a look at what happened via Time Magazine:
Pentagon took a giant step toward integrating openly gay men and women into the U.S. military on Thursday. No, it didn’t repeal 1993’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law — only Congress can do that. But it did something that could be almost as important: it eased the enforcement of that law by loosening the regulations that have been used to snare 13,500 gays — and boot them out of uniform — since 1994. “These changes will allow us to execute the law in a fair and more appropriate manner,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. The revised regs “provide a greater measure of common sense and common decency to a process for handling what are difficult and complex issues for all involved.”
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