Pride Month post #11

[aadler]

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Various activists celebrated at the repeal of DADT. Problem with that is, there was no repeal. DADT was put in place as a compromise, unwelcome in many quarters: it allowed secret homosexuals to stay in the military, as long as they kept their preferences and activities to themselves, and in return the military wouldn’t launch any active investigations in the absence of evidence. A repeal of DADT would have meant a return to “No, homosexuals can’t serve, you’re gone if we find out about it, and we’ll start investigating if anything even gives us reason to wonder.”

So, no, it wasn’t repealed. It was replaced by something else. Which, clearly, has done wonders for our military effectiveness.

I mentioned that it was unwelcome when it was first brought out. This was because many people, seeing the way such things had gone in the past, felt this would simply be an opening wedge. They were extravagantly NOT proven wrong.

Instituted in February 1994, DADT was in place until December 2011. By that time, the compromise measure — “You can serve if you keep it to yourself” — had become the overbearing, intolerable tyranny: “But I don’t WANT to keep it to myself! I want to tell EVERYBODY! And be PRAISED for it!”

History isn’t what happened, but the record of what happened. And that record can be — and a whole lot of it is — a flat lie.