We Need A Few Gay Men

Originally published on March 22, 2007

Gay Americans should be allowed to serve

By Kelvin Wade

'When you get down to it, no American able to serve should be allowed, much less given an excuse, not to serve his or her country."
-Barry Goldwater

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace's recent remarks calling homosexual acts immoral has more and more people calling for an end to the Clinton era "Don't ask, don't tell" gays in the military policy. With our military stretched thin around the globe, the time has come for us to join the 23 other NATO nations that allow gays to serve openly.

It's no secret that ever since President Bush's misguided foray into Iraq the military has had a hard time meeting retention and recruiting goals. Now officials would dispute that. But the only way we've been able to meet some goals has been to throw money at recruits, give moral waivers and relax age, weight and aptitude standards.

According to the New York Times, the number of waivers the Army has given to new recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown 65 percent in the past three years. Eleven percent of the 8,129 "moral waivers" the Army granted last year went to people with felony convictions. So the Army can knowingly bring aboard criminals, but not homosexuals?

In this kind of climate, it's absurd that anyone would be removed from service on the basis of who they sleep with.

A GAO report on the impact of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy released this month shows that since its implementation, we've removed more than 10,000 homosexuals from the military at a cost of $200 million. Among that number, more than 300 spoke Arabic, Farsi, Korean and Mandarin. At a time when the U.S. needs recruits who speak foreign languages, we've kicked them out because of who they sleep with.

The president keeps telling us we're in a war against terror. Does anyone care whether the soldier who blows Osama Bin Laden's head off sleeps with the same sex or not? And I imagine that when the IEDs are exploding and the bullets are whizzing in Anbar Province in Iraq, those Marines don't give a darn about the sexual orientation of their fellow grunts. Shared combat has a way of cementing esprit de corps.

My late father served in the U.S. Navy for 28 years and worked for the defense department another 20. I'd watched my dad joke about homosexuals with his old Navy buddies. So imagine my surprise when I asked him years later if he thought gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military and he said yes! Reminiscent of Goldwater, he said if a man wants to serve, he should be able to serve.

More and more decision makers are coming around to this practicality. Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Ret. Gen. John Shalikashvili supports gays serving openly. Former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner, R-VA, who disagreed strongly with Pace's remarks, is open to the idea of changing the policy.

Gen. Pace is free to believe that homosexual acts are immoral. Millions of Americans share that belief as dictated by their faith. This is America and we can believe what we want to believe. But we're not staffing God's Army. This is the U.S. Army. And what we believe about someone's sexual orientation shouldn't matter.

In today's military we pay cash incentives, allow non-citizens and criminals to join, and we've lowered the bar to allow for others. So someone from Saudi Arabia can serve in our army but a gay man from Iowa can't? We no longer have the luxury to manufacture reasons for people not to serve.