In the same week that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said he would introduce legislation to repeal the military's ban on openly gay service members, top officials from the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy testified on Capitol Hill, voicing reservations to the president's call to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Only Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, in offering is personal view, said gays should be permitted to serve openly.
Both Pentagon and White House spokespersons as well as gay-rights repeal advocates downplayed testimony, but they also struck back with a media campaign to combat what they say is misinformation about the effects of ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell ( DADT ) ," a 1993 policy and federal law that bars gays from openly serving in the armed forces.
The top officers' hesitancy surfaced last week on Capitol Hill when Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, pressed Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey on their views about a moratorium on all gay-related discharges under DADT during the one-year implementation study period established by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Earlier this month Gates said would appoint a high-level working group to report, by the end of 2010, on how the military can adapt if Congress were to repeal DADT. Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe General Carter Ham head the study group.
The impetus for the working group came from President Obama, who called for a lifting of the ban in his State of the Union Address.
"If you're asking for my personal opinion, as to the effects of a moratorium," McHugh said, "We have any number of cases underway pursuant to the current law that would be greatly complicated." Specifically, McHugh cited the Army's Lt. Dan Choi, who came out on The Rachel Maddow Show last year. A West Point alumnus, Choi is a high-profile Arabic-language expert whose discharge is currently pending under DADT.
For his part, Casey said a moratorium would "complicate" the implementation process already set in motion by Gates, explaining, "We would be put in the position of actually implementing it while we were studying the implementation."
Casey went even further. "I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight and a half years," he said. "We just don't know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness."
Before the House Armed Services Committee, moreover, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff for the Air Force, voiced a "strong conviction" that now "is not the time to perturb the force, this is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, without careful deliberation."
Top Navy and Marine Corp leadership said they, too, opposed a moratorium on gay discharges. "I would encourage you to either change the law or not," said Gen. James T. Conway, Marine Corps commandant. "But halfway measures will only be confusing in the end."
And Gen. Conway left little doubt about his views. "At this point, I think the current policy works," he said. "My best military advice to this [ Senate Armed Services ] committee, to the secretary, to the president would be to keep the law as it is." For Conway, the issue is combat mission, he said, how any change "would enhance the war-fighting capabilities of the US Marine Corps by allowing homosexuals to serve openly."
For his part, Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said, "There has never really been an assessment of the force that serves," adding, "Equally important is the feelings of the families that support that force." Lift-the-ban reviews, he said, should focus mainly on military readiness.
By the end of the day Feb. 25, the last day of top brass testimony, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, said that Gates and military officials want Congress to hold off on lifting restrictions on gays in the armed forces until the yearlong review is completed. "Taking action now would pre-empt the review process that everybody agrees is needed to do this smartly," he said, according to Reuters. "Taking action before [ the review ] is done is putting the cart before the horse, Morrell added, referring to either passage of repeal DADT legislation or a moratorium.
On Feb. 26, moreover, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that "Don't Ask, Don't Repeal" is on the right track. Responding to a question from D.C. Agenda reporter Chris Johnson, Gates said, "I think [ the military and Pentagon process initiated by Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen ] is a very strong start for a process that the president believes will end—will end in overturning—rightfully overturning that law."
In his remarks, Gibbs took note of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen's testimony last week when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee "My personal belief is that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do." As Gibbs explained, "You heard for the first time ever the chairman of Joint Chiefs discuss the need to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'"
Although military officials comments contrasted with Mullen's full-throated call for openly gay service members, repeal advocates voiced optimism about the review process and eventual repeal.
In response to the Casey-Schwartz testimony, for example, Aubrey Sarvis, executive director the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network ( SLDN ) , said, "Neither Gen. Casey nor Gen. Schwartz expressed opposition to the plan their bosses—Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen—put before them earlier this month. We expect that they will work within the framework the Pentagon has outlined."
Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, said he expected "senior military leadership would oppose a moratorium," because "although a moratorium may be politically easier to deal with than full repeal, military leadership evaluates proposals based not on politics, but rather on their substantive outcomes."
Explaining further, Nicholson said, "A moratorium would have the same practical outcome on the ground as full repeal, and that is how the service secretaries and service chiefs are going to evaluate it." From their perspective, he said, "It would not make sense to support a proposal that has the same impact as full repeal while they are still undertaking an analysis of how to mitigate any issues that may arise from full repeal."
Other gay-rights activists, meanwhile, have focused their attention to how mainstream media covers DADT. Media Matters for America, a Web-based not-for-profit progressive research and information center ( www.mediamatters.org ) , released a what it calls "a comprehensive review of the myths and falsehoods [ that ] media conservatives" hold out "in an effort to prevent repealing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'"
In a display of solidarity with activists, more than a dozen individuals and LGBT organizations have endorsed the Media Matters project. Pointing to "outrageous myths," the signatories pledge to ensure "fair and accurate news reports" because "the public deserves an honest debate—not one marred by blatant falsehoods and anti-gay attacks."
Still, other repeal advocates are calling for a more aggressive posture. Longtime national LGBT community activist David Mixner advocates a three-point "tough and uncompromising approach." First, he insists that Obama issue a "stop-loss" order that would, in effect, stop all discharges among troops deployed in combat.
Second, Mixner calls on LGBT leadership and organizations to pressure Congress and insist on an amendment to the "Defense Authorization Bill" and repeal DADT this year.
Third, if those pleas fall on deaf ears, then the LGBT community should stage sit-ins—nonviolent civil disobedience—at congressional leadership offices until there is a vote. "Under no circumstances should we wait another year for a worse Congress to vote," according to Mixner's "Act on Principles" no-more excuses call to arms, posted at www.actonprinciples.org .
