by Mary M. Redoutey

Created on: February 07, 2010

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy was instituted in 1993 by President Clinton and Congress as a compromise between those who wanted to remove the outright ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military and those who wanted that ban to remain. The law states that soldiers who disclose their homosexuality or who are outed by others as homosexuals must be discharged under the law.

I am hetrosexual and am not speaking on behalf of any lobby when I state that I believe that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy" is flawed and should end.

It seems to me rather illogical that in this day and age, all it takes is for someone to level a charge that someone is "gay" to make them lose their career, their way of life and their ability to serve their Country. It reminds me in some ways of the days in Salam where women were burned at the stake after being called "witches" with little or no evidence.

As the military is trying to increase its numbers to more than 48,000,  the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy seems to be counter-productive. It wastes the taxpayer's precious resources as we spend good money to train and to outfit men and women to serve our Country and then we lose their services just because they have been labelled as being "homosexual" whether or not they were actually doing anything that went against the conduct befitting of a military man or woman.

Since the law was instituted, more than 12,000 men and women have been ousted from the military and more than 800 of them have been in very key mission critical areas, either high ranking or in areas like linguistics (dozens of Arab language specialists) that are badly needed by the military, etc. There is every reason to believe that the loss of these men and women did not help the military but hurt it badly.

The dirty little secret in the military is the sexual harrassment that goes on in there...and unfortunately the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy worsens this problem.

Many a straight female soldier who rebuffs sexual advances due to desire to be chaste, to honor her committments to her work, her religious beliefs, or to her man, are labelled as "lesbians" and are investigated and sometimes wrongly ousted from the military.

When a female soldier, straight or secretly lesbian, is sexually harrassed by male soldiers or raped by male soldiers, they often are labelled "openly lesbian" by their attackers and by their attacker's

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