Two senior Pentagon officials in the Clinton administration are suggesting that the anti-gay policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' ( DADT ) should be changed.
Retired Army General John M. Shalikashvili led all U.S. forces in Europe when President Bill Clinton announced the 'compromise' of DADT. He became the nation's top military man, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later that fall.
'I supported the current policy because I believed that implementing a change in the rules at that time would have been too burdensome for our troops and commanders,' he wrote in an op-ed column in the New York Times on January 2.
'The question before us now is whether enough time has bone by to give this policy serious reconsideration. Much evidence suggests that it has.'
Shalikashvili's opinion is based upon conversations last year with gay service members who have served in Iraq and elsewhere; a Zogby poll of over 500 service members who have returned from the war zone with three-quarters supportive of allowing gays to serve openly; and the experience of allies such as Britain and Israel in allowing gays to serve.
'I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces,' he wrote. 'Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.'
But Shalikashvili also had second thoughts about his second thoughts; 'The timing of the change should be carefully considered.' He thought it should not be an early priority for the new Congress.
Former Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen agreed. 'It's time to start thinking about it and starting to discuss it,' he said when interviewed that evening by CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
'I think what we're hearing from within the military is what we're hearing from within society, that we're becoming a much more open, tolerant society for diverse opinions and orientations,'
Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., introduced legislation to repeal DADT in the last session of Congress and has pledged to hold hearings on the bill now that Democrats control that body.
'There is no place in this country for discrimination, be it on the basis of race, creed, or sexual orientation, and there is certainly no place for institutional discrimination codified in federal statute,' Meehan said in a statement released by his office.
C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, called Shalikashvili's statement 'enormously significant… The dominos propping up 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' are falling, and they are falling quickly. It is clear that prominent military leaders question the wisdom of maintaining the ban.'
'General Shalikashvili is the latest in a string of seasoned military leaders who have looked hard at the issue and determined it's time for a change,' said Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California Santa Barbara. The center studies issues of gays in the military.