by Tucker Lieberman

Created on: November 05, 2011

Until 2011, the United States excluded gay people from military service. In the late twentieth century, the military mandated discharge for anyone discovered to self-identify as gay (unless an avowed celibate) or to have married, or tried to marry, a person of the same sex (even though same-sex marriage was not yet legal anywhere in the United States). Such people were at risk for discharge regardless of whether they deliberately revealed their sexuality or attempted to keep it secret.  By contrast, to state the obvious, straight people were not discharged for being discovered to have dated, slept with a lover while off-duty, proposed marriage, married, or divorced.

In 1993, President Clinton softened the policy so that recruits were never supposed to be directly questioned about their sexuality and, in return, would be expected to conceal their sexuality. The policy, Section 654 of Title 10 of the United States Code, became known conversationally as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It kept intact the existing mandatory discharge of any servicemember who is discovered ever to have so much as attempted to engage in "a homosexual act" (unless it was an anomaly that was "unlikely to recur"); to have admitted to identifying as gay (unless an avowed celibate); or to have married a person of the same sex. Even if a soldier was not openly gay, he or she could still be discharged if discovered to be gay.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in retrospect, the rates of discharge did not decrease under the new version of the policy. Gay soldiers continued to be vulnerable to blackmail by other soldiers who would threaten to "out" them. Furthermore, those discharged under the new policy were disproportionately female, people of color, enlisted rather than commissioned, and within their first few months of service.  Estimates of the total number of servicemembers discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" during its entire tenure from 1993-2011 run between 14,000-17,000.

Gay rights organizations fought for years to repeal the ban. Former President Clinton told CBS in 2010 that he had promoted the policy because Congress would otherwise have imposed a much harsher ban and because he believed that under his administration's version of the policy "gay service members would never get in trouble for going to gay bars, marching in gay rights parades as long as they weren't in uniform. That's a very different 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' than we got."

President

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