A long lasting and underlying problem in the modern day military, this problem being Sexuality. In American history those who have not been decidedly “straight”, only being attracted the opposite sex, have always been looked down upon and persecuted especially in the military. This problem must be addressed, all humans should have the basic right to defend and fight for king and country despite sexual orientations. It was only recently that that an act to protect openly gay service members came into play. This was the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy or DADT for short, this policy theoretically lifted a ban on homosexual service that had been instituted during World War II. This policy was put into play by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and it …show more content…
On November 30th 2010 the pentagon released another pre-repeal study saying, “repealing the policy would pose little risk to military effectiveness. Some seventy percent of service members surveyed believed that ending the policy would have mixed, positive, or no impact.” (Britannica) This study was based solely on majority opinions while it was also included that forty to sixty percent of those in the Marine Corps had negative or general concerns with the repeal of the DADT policy, the Marine Corps is just one aspect of the military and cannot possibly outweigh the rest of the said participants in the study. For further proof that repealing the DADT policy would have no adverse effects on the military or their actions is the same report of the pentagon study from an entirely different source, “A Pentagon study released earlier this month suggested that repealing the military ban would not adversely affect the troops.” (Huffington Post) Clearly the main conflict here was opinionated people attempting to oppose the wheels of change within their own lives. However such things cannot be put in the way of such important …show more content…
That being said the military openly took advantage of the DADT policy to target those who were anything but heterosexual persons. To put this into perspective, according my source, “between 1998-2003, the military discharged 49 nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare specialists, 90 nuclear power engineers, 52 missile guidance and control operators, 150 rocket, missile and other artillery specialists, and 340 infantrymen.” (Palm Center) that means that under the DADT policy, an act that was meant to protect those of other sexual orientation, from 1998 to 2003 alone a total of 681 military personnel were discharged for their sexuality. While details about each and every discharge are most likely very secure and unattainable, one can only be left assume that these people were being targeted under the DADT policy. One could even go so far as to argue that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell act gave superiors even more merit to attack the LGBT community within the military as well as making it continually making it easier to single them out and ultimately leading up to their discharge. These are circumstances that cannot repeat themselves, a policy that is meant to protect should indeed protect not give more reason to attack those who cannot