Congress: Tear Down this Law!

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” must be repealed. Now.

I recently read an article in the New York Times about two Generals who are now against the law’s repeal. One of the Generals is quoted as saying, “I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years.”

Question: When will it be okay to repeal the law? Will that time come after we finish fighting for “freedom” all over the world while we continuously discriminate against people in our own society? Will we be ready once we finish exporting “American values” of fairness and openness while we hinder people who are risking their lives for those values from expressing their full selves? Or maybe it will be time to repeal the law after we decide that we want to get off of our moral high ground and stop telling the rest of the world what to do while we mask pure discrimination, contempt, and prejudice with “concerns” about prejudiced people being forced to actually confront their discriminatory views.

Oh I forgot: we live in a country where protecting minority rights amounts to preserving a broken senatorial system in which 40 senators can obstruct the majority as opposed to protecting groups of people from blatant injustices and inequalities. My bad.

Saying that “people are not ready” is a cop-out. If we wait for the ruling class of society to simply rid itself of all its prejudices and broadly begin to accept everybody it sees as different from the norm before we take action on issues of discrimination, then we might as well get some ice skates and prepare for a hockey game in Hell.

Yes, it will make people uncomfortable. Rightly so! When it comes to matters dealing with discrimination, our decision should be based on what is morally correct as opposed to the comfort of the privileged. It sickens me to see politicians and other leaders riding around the country, professing to champion the underdog, the regular American, Joe the Plumber, Main street, etc, and continue to be too afraid, politically timid, or unscrupulous to object to a law that so clearly violates the very ideals for which our soldiers are supposed to be fighting.

I fully agree with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the New York Times article mentioned above, Admiral Mullen states, “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.”

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” asks our troops to operate under a policy that is misguided at best and the antithesis to everything this country proclaims to be about with regard to freedom, justice, and inequality at worst. Let’s fight for our values while living by our values.