It's official: the Senate has voted to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which kept Gays from serving openly in the military, and the alleged president is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as his metrosexual nail gloss dries.
Here at Hope n' Change, we have genuinely mixed feelings about this policy change. We didn't like "Don't Ask" because it was forcing men and women to live a lie. Moreover, we support the notion of Gay Rights (not greater rights than straight folks have - simply the same). And though it sounds cliched, some of our best friends really and truly are Gay, and we have great respect for the monogamous longterm Gay relationships we've seen firsthand.
All of that being said, the military is a special situation. Individuals must mesh together and work as a team, or people will die. Which makes this a very high-stakes environment for social experimentation.
Some hand-picked military experts have said they expect the transition to be problem-free. Others have said that they expect the presence of openly Gay troops to hurt morale and weaken our fighting strength and security. And if the experts can't agree, how could the rest of us hope to know what's best?
So we hope that the reversal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a success...and that the integration of Gay troops has no negative impact. But if it does have a bad outcome, we also hope that leaders will have the courage to come forth and say so, and change the system back...even if it offends the politically correct.
In closing, we leave you with this clip from the film "Full Metal Jacket" in which you can see the way military team-building is, and must be, done. The language is "not safe for work," but the reason you're safe at work is because soldiers who look, sound, and act like this have made it safe. And we dare not weaken them.
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