Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) speaks about the dangers of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at the Family Research Council on Tuesday. (Photo by Grant Slater | MNS)
WASHINGTON — Elaine Donnelly thinks the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was grimacing for a reason as he helped present a Defense Department report that concluded ending its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy would have little effect on the military.
“They know there was nothing in that report that showed a single benefit to the military in terms of readiness, recruiting, retention,” by lifting the ban on gay troops, said Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative Christian group set against repeal of the ban.
The Department of Defense had no immediate comment on Donnelly’s assessment of Adm. Mike Mullen’s mood during the report presentation.
Donnelly and other supporters of the ban Wednesday lined up to offer reasons to stop the repeal process or bog it down well into next year at a press conference sponsored by the Family Research Council. They want a new survey and more hearings.
Republican leaders in the Senate already have said they may block any proposal put forward by Democrats before the end of the year that does not address taxes and spending, making the likelihood of a DADT vote very slim.
Council president Tony Perkins used the same numbers from the report that Defense Secretary Robert Gates trumpeted as evidence of what would be a collective “So what?” among service members if the ban were repealed to paint a darker picture of a military sliding toward malfunction.
Their central point lies with the large percentage of respondents – around 30 percent depending on the phrasing of the question – who say repeal would have both negative and positive effects.
Lumping those respondents in with either those who support the repeal or those who oppose it greatly tilts the numbers presented in the survey.
“They didn’t ask the right question,” Perkins said, referring to the lack of a straightforward query as to whether troops supported or opposed repeal.
On the route to discrediting the survey, the conservative Christian leaders echoed some of the sentiments expressed by those in the survey who were against the ban.
“Homosexuality is morally offensive,” one serviceman said. “Like adultery, and drug use, I cannot tolerate homosexuality.”
But the leaders speaking on Wednesday went further, warning against an influx of pedophiles and sexual predators as well as a spike in HIV infection for the military if the ban were lifted. The ban, they said, would break the military.
Retired Col. Dick Black said he had monitored disciplinary and criminal activity in the service around the time the ban was instated in 1993.
He said a survey on criminal activity by homosexuals at the time revealed that more than 80 percent were personal attacks and that some of those attacks were by homosexuals “lurking there in the dark.”
“Lifting the ban on homosexuals could very well allow a number of pedophiles and sexual assaulters to re-enter the military services simply because their offenses were poorly documented,” Black said.
Retired Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis said that the study admits that there will be some sort of sex between males in an open military but that the risk for HIV would “not be a concern.”
“The Centers for Disease control might argue with this,” Maginnis said.
But the survey provides the testimony of the surgeons general of the services saying that the effect of lifting the ban would be negligent to nonexistent.
In the one visual of the presentation, Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, flashed a slide of five gay former troops protesting outside the White House this year, pointing to Autumn Sandeen, a transgender advocate for gay rights in the military.
“What do you do with individuals like this?” he asked. “It’s a formula for a command nightmare. This is about breaking the military.”
But Trevor Thomas, spokesman for the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network, said in an interview that the Christian conservatives arguments amounted to hate speech.
“Whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, there are laws in place to preserve law and order in the military,” Thomas said. “Those are the views of the past. Not only are they offensive, they are wrong.”