The bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the House passed easily on Wednesday. Now support for the Senate stand-alone repeal bill looks poised to pass as well. Good thing, too – it’s high time. Gay Americans who want to serve in the defense of their country should be able to do so. As Barry Goldwater said decades ago, “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.” Goldwater was ahead of his time.
Unfortunately for the Republican party, only for GOP Senators have so far voiced their support for repeal: Susan Collins, Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski, and Olympia Snowe. That’s enough – bringing the total votes above 60 even with a couple of potential Democratic dissenters. But it still places most Republicans on the wrong side of history, which is a shame.
There is something to be said for being on the right side of history. The Republican party has its origins in one of the most important historical times in this country’s young life, and was very much on the right side of history then. Indeed, the election of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, spurred the Southern states to secede. The pro-abolition Republicans, they believed, would free their slaves.
It turns out freeing the slaves placed Lincoln and the North very much on the right side of history – even if the war they fought was a bloody and unfortunate one.
It was still decades before blacks and whites would be allowed to integrate in the military, and opposition to integration is another moment in history that many conservatives were on the wrong side of. Few today would deny that their predecessors took not so much a conservative position, but rather a fearful and prejudiced one. Unit cohesion was never compromised by blacks and whites fighting side by side, as so many warned would happen.
The same is true of gays serving next to straights in the military. As long as they can shoot straight. We should not punish the young men and women who are willing to lay it all out on the line and fight, and possibly die, for their country. That’s what unites our troops: love of country – not sexual orientation.
