Don't Ask Don't Tell Has Always Been Wrong

Leonard Pitts who writes for the Miami Herald has a column in the Seattle Times that goes to the heart of why Don't Ask, Don't Tell needs to be repealed - the policy has always been wrong and discriminatory and whether they like it or not, someday its proponents will take their place in history with pro-slavery forces and the segregationists sixty years ago as hateful bigots. The exact form of the hate and discrimination may have differed - and been justified on religious belief just like slavery and segregation - but it boils down to the same thing in the final analysis. Thus, it's amazing that institutions like the Catholic Church - which over the centuries has been wrong so many times - and other denominations care nothing for the legacy that they will have created for themselves. In his column, Pitts looks at this phenomenon. Here are some highlights:
*
We already know where this is going. For some of us, the knowledge is hateful, for others, hopeful. Yet the inevitable arc of it is clear: Maybe it will be 10 years, maybe 20, but we can now envision a day when the last legal restrictions against gay men and lesbians will be struck away.
*
A future is coming in which they will be fully protected from discrimination in housing and employment, free to fall in love and tell it to the judge, to make end-of-life decisions for their partners, to adopt children. And we will look back, vaguely amazed, that such things were ever in controversy, that there was ever a time sexual orientation was used to deny basic rights and privileges. The latest giant step in that direction was taken last week in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
*
There is always someone who fights a rear-guard action against progress, and if he is still around to see how his words play in the history books 20 years from now, it will be entertaining to hear how McCain explains himself. That said, one's satisfaction in knowing the military is poised to end its sexual segregation must balance against the frustration of how long it took to get here. After all, the basic architecture of this issue has not changed since 1993.
*
Gay people haven't changed. Service hasn't changed. No, what has changed is us. We watched "Will & Grace," we made gay friends, we found some measure of the acceptance that had always eluded us.
*
But if it is wrong now to deny a man the right to serve because he is gay, that means it was wrong then. If it is a foolish waste of resources now to kick a woman out because she is a lesbian, that means it was a foolish waste then. If "don't ask, don't tell" is a cowardly compromise with hysteria and homophobia now, then it always was.
*
So one's satisfaction in this inevitable march of progress is tempered by a recognition of how many careers and futures were needlessly broken along the way. We know where this is going, but that doesn't mitigate vexation at the fact that we could have been there long ago but for stupid intransigence and fear.