By Chad Groening and Jenni Parker
August 14, 2003

(AgapePress) - A military watchdog believes in light of the recent Supreme Court decision that threw out the Texas sodomy law, the Bush Administration will have a tough time defending the military's so-called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Loomis has filed a $1.1 million lawsuit seeking to recoup money he claims he lost when he was discharged in accordance with the U.S. Armed Services regulations excluding homosexuals from service. The military's policy on homosexuals has commonly come to be known as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or DADT policy. Loomis hopes the Supreme Court's recent ruling that the Texas sodomy law is unconstitutional will help bring down "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

However, some confusion exists about the military's actual statute. In fact, the DADT policy exists only in Clinton Defense Department enforcement regulations which have been acknowledged as inconsistent with actual law. Prof. Charles Moskos, the military sociologist who proposed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell idea in 1993, observed in a Wall Street Journal article that "The Pentagon policies are, in fact, somewhat more lenient than the language of the statute."

Historic records indicate that Congress carefully considered DADT, President Bill Clinton’s plan to accommodate homosexuals in the military. Members ultimately rejected that plan, however, because it was deemed unworkable and legally indefensible. Instead, Congress passed a 1993 law with language substantially the same as Defense Department (DoD) regulations in effect since 1981. Those regulations gave several reasons why homosexuals are not eligible for military service.

And in a ruling in a 1996 case involving a challenge to the military policy, U.S. District Judge Michael Luttig said of the exclusion law: "Like the pre-1993 [policy] it codifies, [the statute] unambiguously prohibits all known homosexuals from serving in the military ...." The judge added that the Clinton Administration "fully understands" that the law and Defense Department enforcement regulations are inconsistent, and has engaged in "repeated mischaracterization of the statute itself ...."

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, agrees that the DADT policy is unwieldy. She says it is illogical to allow homosexuals to serve in the military just as long as they do not say they are homosexual.

"If the Defense Department or the Department of Justice thinks they can go into court and defend 'Don't ask, Don't Tell,' they will find that it is impossible to do. That's why Congress rejected it, and the Administration needs to get rid of those Clinton-era regulations," Donnelly says.

The Center's president believes it would be better for Bush simply to scrap the ambiguous DADT policy and enforce the law actually passed by Congress in 1993.

"The best thing the President can do is enforce the law faithfully and get rid of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' which is a problem," she says.

Donnelly says she is not surprised that homosexuals who have been kicked out of the military would take advantage of the Supreme Court decision on the Texas sodomy statute in order to challenge the military's established policies. She says the current administration's best course would be to go back to enforcing the outright ban of homosexuals serving in the military, as passed by Congress.

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