Democracy for Vancouver

if it means supporting the gay troops?

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Four former US generals have joined a growing call for a policy that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the military to be axed, after a study showed it is out of step with the times and harming the armed forces.

The retired officers from the Marine Corps, Air Force, Army and Navy, found in a year-long study that the 15-year-old policy, which allows gays to serve in the military only if they do not reveal their homosexuality, “is not working.”

“The military is losing critical talent and it’s requiring some members to serve with a unique disadvantage in that they can’t be honest with their peers,” Nathaniel Franks, a senior research fellow at the Michael D. Palm research center in California, which commissioned the study, told AFP.

Called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Pentagon policy is mandated by a congressional statute passed under President Bill Clinton in 1993 and replaced a blanket ban on homosexuals serving in the military.
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“Those opposed to lifting the gay ban … cast the issue as one of ‘national security’ and ‘military readiness,’ arguing that such a change would put lives needlessly at risk by compromising the high standards of discipline, morale, and unit cohesion on which a strong military relies,” the study said.
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“These days so much has changed in the culture, including the military, that we find in our research — and this is reflected in the findings in the generals’ report — that commanders themselves are not fans of the policy,” said Franks.

“It’s making it difficult for them to do their work,” he said.

The law has to be repealed by Congress before the policy can be axed.

Time to find your backbones, boys and girls. Our soldiers are depending on you.