Obama and Gays in the Military

It isn't clear how Obama feels about gays in the military. For some reason gays seem to think Obama is their friend in Washington despite the fact that he made it clear during his campaign that he was against gay marriage. Now he has hesitated to integrate the military despite the fact that many of the top generals are in favor of letting gays serve openly.

Essentially requiring gay recruits to lie about their sexual orientation is bad policy. It makes them subject to blackmail, especially if they are working their way up through the ranks and are not willing to lie when asked about being gay. In addition, and interestingly, it is a "get out of the military when you want" card that can be played any time. Just come out and you get out.

It is bad policy in any case to lose good soldiers just because of sexual orientation. Dozens of soldiers with crucial language skills have been lost because of the current stupid policy.

The recent congressional hearings resulted in a plan to "study how to integrate the forces." This is expected to take a year. One gay serviceman, who will likely be thrown out for admitting he is homosexual, said there was no problem when his fellow soldiers discovered he was gay, and that integrating the military is not complicated - just do it and it will all be over with the next day. I agree. I don;t honestly think that the soldiers are so unprofessional that there will be huge problems with knowing who is gay among the men they already work and fight with.

Politics is all about testing the wind, of course, and the public is still largely uneasy with homosexuality, so few politicians are willing to make a stand. If he was in favor of stopping this clear discrimination against gays, Obama could have simply signed an executive order the first week in office. It makes one wonder if this is political cowardice or if he actually doesn't want to integrate the armed services.