Most Troops Support Gays in the Military

Given the need for relief that our military has with extended deployments and unending timeline, one would think that the government would want intelligent, patriotic, and capable individuals where it can find them. The military removes about a thousand men and women a year under the "don't ask don't tell (don't pursue)" policy. Including some high profile cases of very necessary, non-combatant, Arab linguists. This at a time when there are emergency stop-loss policies in place as well as involuntary recalls or reserve troops.

Challenges to the policy have come from both social scientists refuting the supposed negative consequences of allowing GLB people to serve openly in the military and from constitutional scholars challenging the right of the government to refuse individuals the right to serve their country.

And now a new poll of active members in the military shows that there is widespread support (or at least indifference) to gays and lesbians serving in the military (see below). The Servicemembers' Legal Defense Fund estimates that an additional 41,000 Americans would join the military were the ban repealed.

There is hope that the new democratic congress will try and repeal the ban; Marty Meehan (D-MA) will re-introduce The Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and allow gays to serve openly. It died in committee during the 2006 session. It is about time, I think.

From 365gay.com 

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Three-out-of-four members of the military who are serving in Iraq or recently returned home say they don't care if someone in their unit is gay according to a poll released Tuesday by Zogby International. They also said that if the military allowed gays to server openly it would have had no effect on their decision to enlist.

Zogby polled 545 troops between Oct. 24 and 26 who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The survey was designed in conjunction with the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

The poll also found that nearly one in four U.S. troops say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual. More than half of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others despite the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that bars gays from acknowledging publicly that they are gay.