“Don’t ask, don’t tell” needs to end now

President Obama and the Pentagon’s top leaders should be applauded for standing up for gay Americans serving in the military, but there is no excuse for leaving the crippling “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban in place one more day.

Seventeen years ago, Congress passed the law that allows lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans to serve. That is, they could serve if they lied, hid all aspects of their private lives, cut their families off from needed support and didn’t anger anyone who might inform on them.

Gay troops are also the only members of the armed forces who can’t tell the military about their families. Because of this, the children and life partners of gay men and lesbians deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan receive none of the support or services the military offers other families. A soldier’s life partner can be the last to know when he or she has been wounded or killed.

More than 13,500 service members have been discharged under this policy. The stressed federal budget has paid from $290 million to nearly half a billion dollars to enforce the ban, UCLA’s Williams Institute estimates.

In his State of the Union speech, Obama repeated his opposition to the ban and promised to work toward lifting it. On Feb. 2, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that they both strongly support the president’s position. Gates and Mullen, though, also said they intend to take a full year to study how to implement a repeal.

This administration doesn’t need a year or even a week to end these unjust discharges. Existing laws governing the president’s power over military personnel give Obama the authority to immediately suspend enforcement, according to the Palm Center at the University of California. Ultimate repeal of the ban would come through Congress.

If enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell” isn’t suspended now, gay service members and their families will continue to be punished under a discredited policy. Bizarrely, their only crime will be to have been discovered at the wrong time.

Without a suspension, the study Gates and Mullen just announced also will be deeply flawed. That study depends on an in-depth survey of service members and their families. How can gay troops participate if they will be booted out of the military for speaking up?

Change is coming, yet honorable members of the service continue to lose their careers — and their families continue to suffer. Unless Obama takes action now, this tragedy will continue, and our nation will be weaker because of it.

Diane Silver writes the nationally syndicated column, Political IQ. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.