What hasn't been brought up is the reason that "don't ask, don't tell" doesn't quite work. It does allow gays to serve, but there is always that hanging over their heads. You can be one of the best troops, not be open about who you are, and then have someone find out and get kicked out.

Even though you are not supposed to "ask, or tell" coworkers ask questions. So then gays have to come up with the "fictitious" boyfriends/girlfriends back home to have a reason they are not talking about who they are seeing and so on. Where coworkers will come in and talk about new relationships, or ups and downs in relationships, the gay troop has to suck it up and move on without talking about it.

I had a friend of mine that was in the Marines, and she was an awesome Marine, she was always going good. She had a friend that she had told about herself. They went to a party off base, and he got drunk and started being a jerk and wanted to get in a fight with someone. In trying to get him out of there he punched her and broke her nose. When they got back to the dorms, he told her that if he got in trouble for hitting her, he would tell on her. Some other people knew about it, and she got called in to her "command staff (I don't remember who), they already knew the story of him hitting her. So she talked to the chaplain about this, and he said to keep her from getting in trouble, she needed to tell her "command staff" about being gay, before it came from this guy. So he got in trouble for hitting her, and she got kicked out of the Marine Corp. She actually had to take someone in to talk to her Commander to say that yes, they had seen her kissing another woman. So letting one friend know about her, cost her a career she had wanted, because he was an ass.

I know when I was at Hickam AFB in Hawaii there was a sweep, where one person was getting kicked out for being gay, and they told him they would dishonorably discharge him if he didn't give names of other gay military members, so he just started listing them. There were AF, Army, and Navy people listed, I believe the Army and Navy didn't kick out the people listed, but the AF brought in the AF people and started processing them for discharge. Also with the threats of dishonorable if they didn't give up names. So with "don't ask, don't tell" you can keep to yourself, but it can still come back to bite you.

So that is one reason why people are pushing to get rid of "don't ask, don't tell", it doesn't mean they want to be completely open about being gay, but they don't want to worry about being kicked out.

Dusti
Active AF Dec 91-Aug 96
Air Guard Aug 96 - present