New Committee on Women in Military Bodes Well for DADT Repeal

As a repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy makes its shaky way through Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD), two appointments to a DOD advisory panel yesterday indicate the DOD may in fact be starting to take the concerns of lesbian and gay servicemembers seriously.

The DOD announced the selection of the new chair and nine other appointees to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), an independent advisory committee on matters related to the recruitment, retention, and well-being of women in the armed forces. One of the new members is Retired Army Reserve Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking member of the armed services ever to be discharged because of her sexual orientation. A 1995 movie about her experience, Serving in Silence, starred Glenn Close as Cammermeyer, and won three Emmy Awards and a Peabody award.

The new chair of DACOWITS, furthermore, is Retired Army Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, the first woman to become a three-star general and a vocal supporter of repealing DADT. Kennedy, briefly rumored to be considered as Barack Obama’s running mate, was a keynote speaker at the 2006 Annual Dinner of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a group working to repeal DADT. She told the audience, “Army values are taught to soldiers from their earliest days in the Army. Those values are: loyalty, duty, mutual respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage ... Military leaders need to respect all service members. We need to recognize that loyalty and selfless service are exhibited equally, by service members of every color, gender and sexual orientation.”

The appointment of two such strong supporters of DADT repeal to DACOWITS is especially significant because women servicemembers have been hit harder than men by DADT. Women make up approximately 15 percent of the armed forces, but constituted 34 percent of DADT discharges in Fiscal Year 2008, according to Servicemembers United, another group working to repeal the policy. (Servicemembers of color have also been hit disproportionately by DADT, but that is a topic for another post.)

I had the pleasure of meeting Col. Cammermeyer briefly once, when she was touring the country to raise funds for her (unsuccessful) Congressional bid in 1998. My primary recollection is that she was very tall — but I am very short, so perhaps it was a matter of perspective. Perhaps, too, that sense of her height was enhanced by her “command presence,” the authority and bearing that the military imbues in its best members. Bottom line: she doesn’t strike me a person to accept a committee position only to be window dressing. I am guessing Kennedy is much the same — and that can only be good as the government and military continue to debate whether and how to repeal DADT.

Photo credit: Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, USA (Ret.), courtesy SLDN