DADT repeal won't be as tough as military integration
OPINION - The repeal will take time to fully work itself through military policy from top to bottom. But it won't present the monumental problems that race caused...
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen quickly got to the point in their recent congressional testimony on “repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy”:http://www.thegrio.com/politics/dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal-final-frontier-of-the-civil-rights-movement.php. They dismissed critics’ comparison between implementing the DADT repeal and racial integration in the armed forces.
Gates and Mullen are right. It took more than a century and a half of blacks fighting in America’s wars culminating in World War II before President Harry Truman in 1948 signed the executive order officially integrating military units.
Truman did it by executive order for two reasons. One, he had the power to do it, and two, if he hadn’t, the likelihood is that he would have had to wage a titanic fight in Congress to get it to pass legislation barring segregation in the armed forces. Truman issued his order six years before the Supreme Court’s Brown decision on school segregation. This meant that at the time Truman issued his armed forces desegregation order, segregation was still officially the law of the land. There wasn’t much wiggle room on that.
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Schools, public accommodations, housing, and employment were racially tiered with blacks isolated and on the bottom. Truman’s military order was virtually universally condemned or treated with deep skepticism by the army brass. The issue of how to integrate blacks into previously all-white units, and make sure that they functioned and fought as a cohesive body and to reduce the friction and even hostility between black and white soldiers was a huge challenge.
The military grappled with the racial challenge during the Vietnam War and even today as military experts and officials note the challenge of totally eliminating racial friction and conflict has still not been completely resolved.
The differences in the treatment of gays and blacks in the military though go beyond just race.
The military is much smaller today than at the time of Truman’s order. Then there were about 8 million active service members. Blacks made up about 700,000 service members. Nearly all were serving in segregated units and mostly commanded by white officers. They were rigidly segregated on military bases and were still largely assigned to menial and service and labor duties. The Korean War barely changed that.
Blacks through the early years of the war still fought and died in segregated units. The change to integrated units was marked in part by gradualism, and in part by necessity, namely the high casualties that white soldiers suffered and the need for replacements.
This is in wild contrast to the policy toward gays. Gays have always served, fought and died in America’s armed services and wars. During the years of a segregated armed forces, white gays have served in white units with all the privileges and advantages that white military personnel had over blacks. The only issue was their silence about their sexual orientation and their compliance with military protocol.
Discrimination against gays in the military exploded as a public issue of controversy and fierce debate during the Clinton presidency when he and the military chiefs issued the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ dictum. Gay groups and gay service personnel screamed loudly and correctly that this was blatant discrimination and cited repeated studies and surveys that showed that gays in the military did not disrupt, divide, or compromise in any way military actions and secrets, yet they were still singled out and persecuted by the brass.
The figures bore out their complaint. In the nearly two decades since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was introduced the military discharged over 13,000 troops from its ranks under DADT. The number that has dropped sharply in the past couple of years though partly because of public opinion which largely backs repeal of the DADT policy and pressure from gay activists groups and in part the strong support for repeal from President Obama and top military officials and a solid majority in Congress. The recent House and Senate vote confirmed that.
The dire prediction from Senator John McCain and a some older veteran service groups that the repeal of DADT will cause disrupt and demoralize the services are mostly smoke and mirrors last ditch efforts to muddy the water on the issue. As in the past, there is absolutely no proof to substantiate this claim.
The military today unlike in Truman’s time is a volunteer army. There are less than 2 million service personnel in it, and best estimate that gays make up about 400,000 service personnel (or about 2 to 3 percent). And by every account they are already well-integrated throughout the ranks with no conflicts reported. A 2006 Zogby International poll of military personnel confirmed that. It found that the overwhelming majority said that gays serving in the military had no negative impact and there were no issues of demoralization.
The repeal will take time to fully work itself through military policy from top to bottom. But it won’t be take the decades or present the monumental problems that race caused and still causes the military.
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