On the advice of more than 50 retired generals and admirals, the House Armed Services Committee agreed yesterday to revisit the utility of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The discriminatory standard, which has led to the discharge of thousands of capable troops serving in the midst of two wars, has already been rejected by voters, and lawmakers are prepared to rethink the approach.
But what’s the best way to win the policy debate? Emphasize fairness? Military readiness? The fact that gay soldiers are already serving their country honorably? The fact that it costs a lot of money to undermine our own national security?
No, as it turns out, the way to make it painfully obvious that the right is wrong about this is simply to let conservatives present their argument out loud.
The House Armed Services personnel subcommittee made just such a miscalculation yesterday. Holding the first hearing in 15 years on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, lawmakers invited a quartet of veterans to testify on the subject and also extended an invitation to [Elaine Donnelly], who has been working for years to protect our fighting forces from the malign influence of women.
Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of “transgenders in the military.” She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading “HIV positivity” through the ranks.
“We’re talking about real consequences for real people,” Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about “inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community,” the prospects of “forcible sodomy” and “exotic forms of sexual expression,” and the case of “a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault” a fellow soldier.
At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.
Ironically, the more this apparently unhinged lunatic railed against gays in her testimony, the more lawmakers realized there are no legitimate arguments in support of the DADT policy.
Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement “just bonkers” and “dumb,” and he called her claims about an HIV menace “inappropriate.” Said Snyder: “By this analysis . . . we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country.”
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a veteran of the war in Iraq, called Donnelly’s words “an insult to me and many of the soldiers” by saying they “aren’t professional enough to serve openly with gay troops while successfully completing their military mission.”
Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), pointing at Navy Capt. Darrah, asked Donnelly, “Would you please tell me, Miss Donnelly, why I should give one twit about this woman’s sexual orientation, when it didn’t interfere one bit with her service?”
When Donnelly started to say something about “forced intimacy,” Shays cut her off: “You’re saying she has no right to serve her country because she happens to have a different sexual orientation than you.”
Donnelly responded, “What would you say to Cynthia Yost, the woman on a training exercise assaulted by a group of lesbians?”
Now, I’ve never heard of Yost, but if Donnelly is right — a huge “if” — there was an alleged assault in 1974. In other words, we should prohibit millions of American volunteers from serving in the military in 2008 — during two wars — because of a single incident, which may or may not have occurred, involving lesbians 34 years ago.
By that logic, any instance of sexual assault committed by a heterosexual man in the Armed Forces over the last three decades should necessarily prevent the Pentagon from allowing openly-straight soldiers from serving in the military.
I should note that the committee also heard from sane people.
It was tempting to think that Donnelly had been chosen by Democrats to sabotage the case against open military service for homosexuals. But Republicans had consented to the witness panel, which also included retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, a black man who likened the current policy to racial segregation in the military, and retired Army Sgt. Maj. Brian Jones, who argued almost as passionately as Donnelly for the need to keep the military straight.
The subcommittee chairwoman, Susan Davis (D-Calif.), asked for the “utmost respect,” and John McHugh (N.Y.), the ranking Republican, urged a “civil discussion.” That held up as Coleman spoke of one of the openly gay soldiers who served with him in Korea, Darrah spoke of the “constant fear of being outed and fired,” and Alva spoke of his lost leg and how he “nearly died to secure rights for others that I myself was not free to enjoy.”
Then came Donnelly, severe in a black jacket with a flag pin on her lapel as she attacked the “San Francisco left who want to impose their agenda on the military.”
Oliver Willis concluded, “In the near future some kid is going to ask his dad: ‘You mean they really stopped people for serving their country, not because they couldn’t perform the job but because they were gay? That’s dumb.'” And the kid will be right.
Maybe those of us who take justice, equality, and national security seriously ought to send Elaine Donnelly a thank-you note. She made clear yesterday that the only reason to exclude gay Americans from military service is blind hatred.
Post Script: Keep in mind, by the way, that when it comes this debate and the presidential campaign, John McCain is on Elaine Donnelly’s side.