Newsweek:The Military: A Renewed War Over 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

[cal04]

With the Democrats in control of Congress, some activists are hoping they'll add a controversial issue to their to-do list: revisiting the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Gay servicemembers have sought a policy change for years.

Now, says Steve Ralls, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, gay vets hope they might make some progress at a time when the military can't afford to turn away the willing and able. Last year the Pentagon discharged 742 service members for homosexuality, according to SLDN.

But making a change won't be easy: gay-rights advocates have seen a troubling signal from the Pentagon. Massachusetts Rep. Martin Meehan and the American Psychiatric Association complained last June when they learned the military's disability policy classified homosexuality as a mental disorder—something the APA stopped doing in 1973. Then the Pentagon quietly reclassified it in July. Last week Meehan and the APA complained once more: homosexuality has now been grouped with other "conditions, circumstances and defects" like bed-wetting, repeated venereal-disease infections and obesity.

The reclassification is "even worse," says Aaron Belkin, who studies gays in the military at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Now (homosexuality) is explicitly deemed to be a defect." Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith says the Defense Department does "not think homosexuality is a mental illness" and says the classification could be re-examined.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15790419/site/newsweek/

[William769]

1. I thought Pelosi said DADT was off the table?

[msongs]

2. 2nd class citizens without full legal rights should not have to be in the military of the

people with full rights, especially when the pro war people are so reluctant to do any of the dying themselves.

round up all the young republicans and their ilk, plus the pro war democrats, and we would have all the cannon fodder needed.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[DaveinMD]

3. they don't have to be

they want to be.