DON'T ASK, TELL THE SENATE TO GET IT DONE!

Support all the troops
By Kelvin Wade December 16, 2010

My respect for the military started with my father. Master Chief Petty Officer Orvis Wade served in the U.S. Navy for 30 years. My family grew up on military bases including Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, and Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato. We moved to Fairfield in 1976 when our dad was stationed at Alameda.

Fairfield loves the military. We've fought elections over who wants to protect Travis Air Force Base more. We have families who have loved ones in harm's way and others serving in relative peace in faraway places who deserve our support and respect.

But what I can't respect is the fact that the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is still in force. We're still spending millions to hound hundreds of gays out of the military every year.

Though Republicans are currently blocking repeal, this isn't a partisan issue.

In a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 77 percent of Americans support letting openly gay men and women serve. That includes 86 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents and 74 percent of Republicans.

In the Pentagon's 2010 survey of active duty military personnel, 70 percent felt repeal would have a positive, mixed or no effect. Another part of the study found that 92 percent of soldiers who worked with someone they thought might've been gay found the experience to be very good, good or neutral.

By contrast when white soldiers were surveyed in the 1940s about integrating the military with blacks, four out of five opposed the idea. President Truman did it anyway.

A retired general recently quipped on a news program that he never surveyed troops and asked them if they want to do pushups. You gave the order.

Both Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen support repeal of the anti-gay policy.

So why has this been held up?

While you're reading this, there's a gay soldier on patrol on his latest tour in Afghanistan who is scared, tired and missing his family. He has to be thinking about the 53 U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan last month and the six killed last weekend by a suicide bomber. He's got to be concerned about whether he can trust the Afghan troops at his side because, many times, they've turned on NATO forces. But he volunteered to step up to the plate and defend our way of life.

On top of all his concerns, the U.S. government has tasked him with one more worry: having to lie about who he is or he loses his career.

When the issue was being debated in the early 1990s, I asked my dad where he stood on it. Being well aware of his homophobia, I was surprised that he unequivocally supported gays serving openly.

But maybe he understood something deep down about what it meant to serve your country in the face of indignity. When he joined the Navy and took an oath to defend this country, the country wouldn't defend his right to use white stores and facilities. Ironically, in his day, it was the military's openness that led the nation and for gays, it is the military that discriminates.

The House voted Wednesday to dismantle DADT. Now it's up to the Senate. It's time to not only ask but to tell our leaders to pass this. It's a matter of national character. Peace.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES: Glad to see Republican Senators Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski come out in support of repealing DADT. The Senate currently has 81 votes, enough to break the filibuster by Senator John McCain and pass the repeal.

It's too bad President Bill Clinton didn't have the nerve President Truman had to sign an Executive Order ending this discrimination instead of having it written into law. It's unfathomable that we would be using this as a basis to hound people out of serving their country. At a time of war, where we allow noncitizens to enlist and have issued waivers and have lowered the standards so people with criminal backgrounds can enlist, we have the gall to spend the money and take the time to discharge someone because of their sexuality. At a time when we've been in need of Arab speakers, we've kicked translators out of the military because of their orientation.

One more thing...the Commandant of the Marine Corp Gen. James Amos, who opposes repealing DADT, continually speaks out against it. In his latest remarks he said that it's a distraction and he's afraid that gay soldiers would somehow result in soldiers being killed or injured. He said, "When you life hangs on a line, on the intuitive behavior of the young man....who sits to your right and your left, you don't want anything distracting you. I don't want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don't want to have any Marines that I'm visiting at Bethesda with no legs." If the General can't lead his men, if he thinks he's incapable of leading Marines in a post-DADT corps, then he should step aside. This train has left the station.