According to Politico.com, the military’s discriminatory policy against openly-serving gays and lesbian’s might be on its way out. This highly offensive Clintonesque “compromise,” has results in the discharge of 12,500 service men and women since 1993.
The Defense Department is reviewing its ban on gays in the military and will make public its findings by the end of 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
“We received our orders from the commander in chief, and we are moving out accordingly,” Gates said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said unequivocally: “It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” In his State of the Union address, President Obama used the same language in calling for a repeal of the ban, saying: “It’s the right thing to do.”
Mullen continued: “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. For me, personally, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals, and ours as institutions.”
Gates said he aims to keep politics out of the department’s review. He also acknowledged that since 1993, when the policy was last debated in Congress, “attitudes toward homosexuality may have changed considerably.”
