Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Period.

As those of you who are paying attention know, President Obama has called for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Easier said than done.

In the aftermath of his State of the Union blurb, there has been a decent amount of speculation (although not as much as I would have liked to have heard or read) about what happens next. As with many things, there is an easy way and a convoluted, inefficient, ultimately only partially successful way. The easy way here would be to pass the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a simple piece of legislation introduced years ago that replaces the blah blah blah bad gays of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with the clean, straight-forward (pardon the pun) "policy of non-discrimination based on sexual orientation."

Unfortunately, our government is not known for doing things the easy way. And so the bureaucratic process begins. According to this cnn.com report, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will spend an hour this Tuesday, not unveiling the plan to repeal, but detailing "some of the preliminary steps that need to be taken inside the military in advance of formulating a legislative plan." Right. Step One: outline steps to be taken in anticipation of formulating a strategy to implement the final plan. Step Two: discuss ad nauseum how such preliminary steps will be implemented. Step Three: form a committee. And so on and so forth until we get to Step Forty-Seven: discuss the woulda/coulda/shoulda of the preliminary steps and start again at Step One. In the meantime, the war continues and more gay troops are dismissed. 644 and counting on your watch, Mr. President. At $43,000 a discharge, well, you do the math.

To make matters worse, it sounds as though Gates wants "options" ranging from the aforementioned "legislative plan" to steps for "humanely implementing the current ban" including only allowing discharge if a servicemember is outed by a third party. Say what?! What about R-E-P-E-A-L says make a minute change that maintains the separation and forced closeting, without addressing the blaring discrimination and underlying hate? And, Mr. Gates, the full title is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue," meaning third parties should keep their noses out of it anyway.

Gates and his colleagues have their panties in a twist over some hypothetical gay takeover of the armed forces should DADT simply be repealed. There is going to be talk of the need for separate barracks and maybe even separate showers, as if with gays openly serving, a stint in Afghanistan is going to feel like a hedonistic romp in Ibiza. Gates is being vocally "cautious," proceeding in a manner that "mitigates any downsides, problems that might be associated with it." He's worried about costs, recognizing gay spouses, and hate crimes. He's assuming this is going to be disastrous.

This kind of talk is nothing but detrimental to the success of a DADT repeal. The more gay soldiers are (falsely) represented as sexual, mental and emotional threats to their straight counterparts, untrustworthy of sleeping in the same room or showering in the same building, the more hostile the environment toward them will be, should they ever be allowed to serve openly.

NEWS FLASH!! Gays are already in the military. They put on the same camo and inadequate standard issue armor, and make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of whatever it is we're fighting for over there. Military personnel agree more and more that the policy is bunk. Tim Hasselbeck filled in for his Fox News sound bite spewing wife, Elisabeth, on the View the other day. He spoke passionately and lucidly about the irrelevance of the policy. The fun starts at 6:00. The gist? What affects a unit is not sexual orientation but ability to get the job done. And with no end in sight to our military entanglements, why continue for even one more day to shut the recruitment doors in the faces of willing and able citizens?

Enough of this clumsy, transparent chit chat about the right way to do this. REPEAL. PERIOD.

Photo credit: Thomas Claveirole