I Would Like to See the Elimination of DADT or Its Expansion

You are forgetting that the only people who should be making the decisions on who should serve in the millitary are those who run the millitary. Dont ask dont tell is a joke, and the prior regulations should be enforced, if that is the will of those in charge

Why do we have to always be so behind the times? The Europeans have done this already. Gays have fought bravely in every war in this nations history, its documented. The real reason is homophobia within the military and the fear of other soldiers harassing the openly gay and lesbian soldiers. They fear some soldiers will be uncomfortable with sharing living quarters with gays and lesbians and some may harass the gay and lesbian soldiers. They need to get over their fear is the main thing. Yes you make a good point if they could not reveal they were heterosexual in any way they would see the ridiculousness of this law.

If the people who run our government decides that the millitary should run its own operation the way it wants to then you would be for it, correct?

Remember this is the military, not a social laboratory

To be honest I think the policy would work fine if the government enforced the "don't ask" part as zealously as they enforce the "don't tell" part. As we have it now, straight people are free to "out" gays serving with them. By my understanding of the law, enquiring someone's sexual preference is just as against the rules as discussing it. I'd like to see all the people that outed gays in the military be fired from their jobs too, for starters.

This is blatantly off topic but I had to say it. I love your avatar! Eternal Sonata was one of my favorite video games :)

On Topic: nicely written article

To those who say the military is not a social experiment or a social laboratory, or anything else, I'll agree and disagree with you. (And as background, I am retired navy, did 20 years, served on 6 submarines during that time).

The military has been a social experiment/laboratory on several occasions: when integration with the African Americans occured, when integrating women into combat roles, and most recently, they are starting to integrate women into submarine force as well. And so far, in every case, they have succeeded in ways the civilian population hasn't.

Every submarine has around 140 men (and soon to be women) on it. The CO and XO have a one sleeping compartment each, and a shared bathroom all to themselves (1 shower, 1 commode, 1 washbasin), AND in cases where higher ranking officers visit, their individual staterooms have an extra fold down bunk where even they have to share the small bedroom/office they have with someone else.

Officers have 3 3-man staterooms (3 men sharing a small space). Any overflow and the junior officers have to use bunks out with the regular enlisted folk (normally there are about 2-4 of them sharing out there). They also have 1 bathroom (1 shower, 1 commode, 1 sink) that the 9 (or more) of them have to share.

The chiefs (E-7) and above have their own space. 12 beds crammed into one little room. Their overflow also have to sleep out with us regular enlisted. They also have only one bathroom (1 shower, 1 commode, 1 sink) for the 12 (or more) of them.

For the regular enlisted, we had a 39-man berthing area, a 24 man berthing area, a 21 man berthing area, and a 9 man berthing area. We had a total of 2 bathrooms for our use (3 showers, 5 commodes, 1 urinal, and 6 sinks) for the rest of the crew to use.

In case you didn't count, that was only 116 beds for 140 people. So, arrangements were made, and people had to share beds (3 people shared 2 beds, only 2 people off watch at any time, so they never, and in fact were prohibited from, had to physically be in a rack with another man at the same time). For every officer or chief that was an overflow from their original area, that was 3 more enlisted people who were going to have to share.

We had one mess area that was used as our dining facility, training facility, entertainment facility. It seated 24 people at one time, and we were able to serve the entire crew (minus the officers) in under an hour). We saw no sunlight at sea, we got some air exchange with fresh air, but never enough to fully change out the full air supply of the boat. We made our own water. We used sea water to flush our commodes so we didn't waste fresh water on such a simple procedure. Our showers were get in, turn water on, turn water off, soap up, turn water on and rinse, turn water off, get out. We had signs posted that said if you were in the shower for more than 2 minutes, you were wasteing water. We had no doctor on board. What we had was the equivalent of an RN with some extra training thrown into the mix to serve our needs (and yes, under emergency circumstances, we had the equipment on board for that RN to perform emergency appendectomys.)

We had people from all over the country, and all walks of life, couped up in this tin can that was only a football field long and 33 feet wide at it's widest. The aft 2/3rd's of that was all engine room, and you weren't supposed to be back there unless you were on watch or engaging in maintenance, which means we were mostly all couped up in the front 1/3rd of the boat.

We had people from the northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest, and the heartland from North Dakota all the way to the tip of Texas. We had people who grew up in trailor parks, and those who grew up in mansions, people from the suburbs and people from the ghettos. We even had people from Guam and the Phillipines on board. We had people who barely passed their GED's, people with high school diplomas, those with Naval Acadamy degress, MIT grads, Berkley grads, and people from little no name community colleges out in the sticks. We had suburbanites and gang bangers, people who were law abiding citizens as well as those who had been to jail at some point in time, people who had never done drugs as well as those who had dabbled. We had Christians from all faiths (Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, SDA's, even a Mormon or two thrown into the mix), as well as Atheists, Buddhists, Wiccans and Pagans, and yes, even a Muslim or two every now and then. We had heterosexuals and bi-sexuals and homosexuals and asexuals, serial monogamists and polyamorous, people who were married and faithful, those who were married and fooled around. We had Republicans, Democrats, Independants, probably some Tea Party members out there now, conservative, liberal and moderate. We had people who were for and against every issue you could think of, and trust me, when you are couped up together for 60 plus days together, you have discussions on just about every topic under the sun. There were no secrets (except those you never ever told anyone else).

So yes, I'd say we were a social experiment and laboratory every time we went to sea. We went out with a common goal. We certainly did not all see eye to eye, and we performed together cohesively to get the job done. And never once, in all my days at sea on those 6 different subs (every one of which had at least one gay man on board, and one had 6 gay men on board), never once did I see a physcial fight break out for anything.