Don't ask, don't tell
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) was a policy enacted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1993, which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals to serve in the military as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation, and the military did not inquire about it. This compromise emerged from a promise made by President Bill Clinton to lift the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces, which faced significant political opposition. Despite the policy's intention to create a more inclusive environment, it did not eliminate harassment against LGBTQ service members. Over the years, thousands were discharged due to their sexual orientation, even as the military began to soften its stance on enforcement. The policy faced scrutiny and legal challenges from various service members, leading to its eventual repeal in September 2011 under President Barack Obama. Following the repeal, LGBTQ individuals could serve openly, marking a significant shift in military culture. However, issues relating to the treatment of transgender service members continued to be contentious, with policies evolving under different administrations. The legacy of DADT remains a critical chapter in the movement for LGBTQ rights within the military, prompting ongoing discussions about inclusion and fair treatment for all service members.
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Don't ask, don't tell
The phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell” originated as a slang expression in American popular culture that refers to the position taken by the US Department of Defense (DOD) regarding the retention of openly gay or lesbian members of the armed forces during the 1990s. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy did little or nothing to stop harassment of gay and lesbian service members within the various branches of military service.
The DADT policy stated that the military would not inquire as to the sexual orientation of potential recruits or currently serving personnel and that it did not want them to volunteer the information. The policy occurred in response to a series of highly publicized cases in which long-serving and decorated men and women had come out in an effort to oppose the operating policy of the US armed forces and the legal provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The UCMJ regarded gay and lesbian people as unfit to be part of the army, navy, air force, coast guard, or marine corps. If discovered, such persons were to be terminated with an undesirable discharge without regard to their record of service.
The eradication of this discriminatory practice had long been a primary goal of the gay rights movement, and at the beginning of the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton promised in his presidential campaign literature that, if elected, he would remove the ban on gay people serving in the military through the issuance of an executive order. Clinton failed to fulfill this promise after his election because of strong political opposition from members of both parties and from senior military personnel, and he sent to Congress a compromise measure, quickly tagged by the American media with the phrase “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,” based on its main points. The bill was passed by Congress on November 20, 1993, becoming Public Law 103-160.
The provisions of the law focused attention on the necessity of maintaining in the armed forces a high level of morale, discipline, and unit cohesion and stressed that the conditions of the military life were fundamentally different from those of the civilian world, stating that “the prohibition against homosexual conduct is a long-standing element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service.” The standards of military conduct were seen as regulating the lives of all enlisted personnel at all times, whether on or off post, with the prior prohibition of same-sex acts and any solicitation for them expanded to allow separation from the armed forces if “the member has stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual, or words to that effect” or if the individual had married or tried to wed a member of the same gender. Specific changes from the earlier portions of the UCMJ governing military personnel were that officers could not ask service members about their sexual orientation and members were not required to reveal this information—both provisions thought to make the situation for gay troops more tolerable while avoiding confrontation.
Impact
Between the implementation of the DADT policy in 1993 and the end of the decade, 5,475 individuals were separated from the four branches of the US armed forces because of their gay, lesbian, or bisexual orientation. Questioning about sexual orientation at the time of induction stopped, while prosecutions based on sexuality declined, as did investigations aimed at uncovering the presence of enlisted gay, lesbian, or bisexual men and women at military posts. The brutal 1999 beating murder of army private Barry Winchell at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, who was presumed to be gay and had been harassed by his fellow soldiers without interference from superior officers to stop the actions, led to the issuance of new guidelines on antigay harassment and an executive order from President Clinton providing for enhanced sentences under the UCMJ for hate crimes. In February 2000, the Pentagon added the phrase “don’t harass” to the title of the policy.
A unique nonprofit organization, the Service Members Legal Defense Network, was formed in 1993 to serve as a source of legal advice for individuals affected by “don’t ask, don’t tell” and to act as a watchdog group on military policies of exclusion. Among its stated goals were the elimination of the ban of openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the US armed forces and support for active service members and veterans organizing a visible presence at gay pride events.
A major casualty of the DADT policy was the military’s longstanding contention that gay people could not fulfill complex responsibilities adequately, a position that had been only rarely rebutted in public debate. For the first time in over two decades, women and men dismissed from service went public with accounts of their (in some cases highly distinguished and meritorious) careers cut short by official strictures. Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking officer ever to be discharged from the US military for her sexual orientation, challenged DADT. She filed suit in federal court in Seattle in 1992 on the day she was terminated from the service, and she successfully won reinstatement as chief nurse of the Washington National Guard, a story she subsequently told in her book, Serving in Silence (1994). Naval midshipman Joseph Steffan, dismissed from the Naval Academy at Annapolis a week before graduation in 1987, wrote the 1992 account Honor Bound, continuing the tradition begun by Ensign Vernon Berg in his 1978 groundbreaking account, Get Off My Ship. Even an army lawyer, James Kennedy, came out as gay and began actively working to overturn policies he had lately been enforcing.
Perhaps the most damaging blows to the government’s case logic were investigations into the military's history of policies of exclusion. Congressman Gerry Studds, under the Freedom of Information Act, exposed texts and accompanying memoranda relating to a suppressed study, commissioned by the Department of Defense (DOD) in 1988, that concluded that sexuality was unrelated to job performance, recommending serious revision or abandonment of then-current protocols. The results of this investigation had been published in 1990 prior to the Clinton campaign. The sharp debate over the presence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals ignited by the DADT policy continued and intensified throughout the 1990s and into the opening years of the twenty-first century without reaching a consensus for change within the US population or legal system.
Repeal
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama advocated a full repeal of the ban on gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members. Declining numbers of DADT-related discharges suggested that enforcement of DADT had already been growing more lax. In 2010, an amendment of the Defense Authorization Act that would repeal DADT passed the House; however, a filibuster led by John McCain prevented it from succeeding in the Senate. After another attempt to pass the bill later that year was filibustered by Republican members of Congress, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced a standalone version of the bill, known as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The measure passed the House on December 15, 2010, and the Senate on December 18, and the Pentagon began making plans to implement the new policy, beginning with a three-month training period for all personnel. The repeal came into full effect on September 20, 2011.
The repeal had a positive effect on the well-being of gay, lesbian, and bisexual members of the military, who could now be open about their lives and relationships without fear of discharge. However, studies, reports, and comments from military leaders (some of whom opposed the repeal before it took effect) suggest that beyond this, the repeal had little effect on the operations of the armed forces. No negative impact on military efficacy or morale has been recorded.
Meanwhile, however, transgender people continued to be disallowed from serving openly in the military—though by policy rather than by law—and LGBT advocacy groups continued to fight for their inclusion. In 2016, the DOD under Obama announced transgender recruits and personnel could serve, but in 2018, the secretary of defense under Donald Trump controversially issued a memo reversing that stance. However, under Trump's successor and former Obama vice president, President Joe Biden, the DOD issued a new policy effective April 2021 providing for transgender service members to serve openly, transition while in uniform, and be protected from discharge based on gender identity alone. This effectively eliminated the final vestiges of DADT.
Nonetheless, the legacy and real-world impacts of DADT lingered on. Following the repeal of DADT, LGBT veterans with a dishonorable or general discharge under DADT could apply for an upgrade to an honorable discharge to access veterans' benefits, which could be an arduous process. In 2021, on the tenth anniversary of the repeal, the DOD enabled those former service members to obtain benefits without needing an upgrade. Several years later, in June 2024, a federal court ruled that the DOD had been remiss for not automatically upgrading LGBT veterans' less-than-honorable discharges under DADT after the policy was repealed in 2011 and that affected veterans could sue the department.
Bibliography
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