It was reported this past Tuesday that Dan Choi, a gay national guardsman who has become one of the most public faces of the movement to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, has been allowed to return to his unit. Choi revealed his sexual orientation on The Rachel Maddow Show in March and was subsequently recommended for a dishonorable discharge. In June, a panel of officers recommended his discharge under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; a petition circulated by Courage Campaign opposing his dismissal was signed by over 162,000 people. Talking Points Memo spoke to Sue Fulton, a member of Knights Out, an organization of gay West Point Graduates, who pointed out that while Choi’s discharge is pending, his commanding officer can decide whether or not he should remain with his unit.
Fulton surmises that the commanding officer invited Choi back because, like many observers, he had come to believe that DADT may well be repealed, and therefore that Choi might not ultimately be discharged. “I would view it as a recognition by his unit that Dan’s discharge may, after all, NOT be confirmed by the Army,” she said.
Fulton stressed, though, that it’s unlikely that the decision was made by anyone higher in the chain of command. “National Guard commanders have wide latitude in terms of their units,” she said. “This is not a change in Army policy, nor any action from ‘higher headquarters’ that we are aware of.”
This may simply be one isolated–albeit highly publicized–decision on the part of an individual Guard commander, but its implications are not hard to divine. The president expressed unqualified support for the repeal of DADT before a joint session of congress during his State of the Union, and on February 2, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought gays and lesbian should be allowed to serve openly, saying that “no matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” It appears that we are closer than we’ve ever been to allowing gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly and honorably in the armed forces.
Regardless of moral arguments either way, (and according to recent polling, those arguments are becoming more and more one-sided as support for gays serving in the military has burgeoned since DADT was enacted), prohibiting gays from serving openly and discharging them if they are up front about their sexual preference is bad public policy. According to the DADT issue page at the Center for American Progress, over 13,000 military personnel have been discharged since it was enacted, costing taxpayers $363.8 million. In addition to the folly of turning away willing enlistees while the armed forces employ stop-loss measures to keep sufficient numbers of “boots on the ground,” this policy has also resulted in the dismissal of over 800 highly trained “mission critical” personnel. This includes “59 gay Arabic linguists and nine gay Farsi linguists in the last five years,” including Lieutenant Choi. Moreover, 32 other countries have allowed gays to serve with no major problems. From a policy standpoint, this is a no-brainer.