Military scaling back 'don't ask, don't tell' Article

This article talked about the "Dont ask, Dont tell" Policy and it talks about how Obama wants to change the law because its the fair and right thing to do. "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are," Obama said. This shows that Obama believes that it is unjust and unfair for people who are bisexual, lesbian or gay should have the right to be in the military and if they love the country that they live in they should be able to support it by going into the military. I totally agree with what President Obama is saying because I think its the right thing to do. Also in this article, it talked about how it might take years for gay men and lesbians to be fully accepted into the military and that the planning effort will take up about a year. The issues that will be talked about are Among the issues to be addressed by the group: whether gay soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will face any restrictions on exhibiting their sexual orientation on the job; whether the Pentagon will be obligated to provide for their domestic partners; and whether straight military personnel could be compelled to share quarters with gays. This is interesting and its going to be interesting to see what the final outcome is on all of these subjects. I think that America creates a bigger problem on themselves then they really have to. Also, it talks about how the pentagon is the one in charge in making the rules up for this. In the article it says,"Gay rights groups have also complained that the Pentagon is moving too slowly to ease enforcement of the third-party dismissals, noting that Gates asked the Defense Department lawyers for advice last summer but has not acted since then". This could show that it might take years for gays to actually be allowed into the military and that people arent really taking this situation and issue as serious as they need to be. An interesting fact tat it said in this article that interested me was when the article said," Figures released Monday show that 428 people were discharged from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines last year for violating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The total is about one-third lower than in 2008, when 619 people were discharged". That is a lot of people that the military and army are loosing which is not good.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020103711.html