Efforts grow to end ban
on openly gay soldiers

updated 2:06 p.m. ET June 15, 2005

NEW YORK - Critics of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy are gaining new allies, including a few conservative members of Congress and a West Point professor, as they press on multiple fronts to overturn the ban on out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians in the armed forces.

As part of their strategy, opponents of the policy are now highlighting the ongoing struggles of Army and Marine recruiters. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network says in a new report that many highly trained specialists — including combat engineers and linguists — are being discharged involuntarily while the Pentagon “is facing extreme challenges in recruiting and retaining troops.”

On other fronts:

• A federal court hearing is scheduled in Boston next month on a lawsuit by 12 former service members challenging the 12-year-old policy.
• In Congress, four Republicans — including stalwart conservatives Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida — have joined 81 Democrats co-sponsoring a bill to repeal the policy. Gilchrest, a former supporter of the ban, said he changed his view partly out of respect for gay Marines he served with in Vietnam and for his brother, who is gay.
• A U.S. Military Academy professor, Lt. Col. Allen Bishop, wrote a column this spring in Army Times urging Congress to repeal the ban. “I thought I’d get lots of hate mail and my colleagues would walk on the other side of the hall — but there’s been none of that,” he said Tuesday.

White House stands firm
Still, neither the White House nor the Pentagon has given any signal that they would drop their long-standing support for the policy, implemented in 1993 under the Clinton administration. It prohibits the military from inquiring about the sex lives of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay.

On July 6, the Bush administration plans to ask a federal court in Boston to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the policy. The suit cites a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that state laws criminalizing homosexual sex were unconstitutional; the government says that landmark decision has no bearing on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

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