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JOE CREA
Friday, March 04, 2005
Gay activists say that a new Government Accountability Office report underestimates the financial costs of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ since its inception because it does not take into consideration a variety of points, including gay service members who voluntarily choose not to reenlist in the military.
The GAO report — the first congressional study of its kind on the 1993 rules and regulations regarding gay service members — estimates that DADT has cost U.S. taxpayers $191 million since its inception in 1993. Yet the estimates are based on costs associated with discharging officers, including recruiting and training replacements.
“Even by GAO’s admission they don’t reflect the enormity of the information that’s missing,” said Tony Smith, executive director of Military Community Services Network. “It only includes information on enlisted service members, not those in the Marine Corp, National Guard, Coast Guard or other specialty areas.”
It didn’t take Congress long to react to the report. A Massachusetts congressman introduced a bill on Wednesday that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with 50 co-sponsors, according to the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network.
The report notes that approximately 757 (or 8 percent) of the 9,488 service members discharged held “critical occupations” such as “voice interceptor, data processing technician or interpreter/translator.”
In response to the GAO summary, the Pentagon noted in a letter signed by David Chu, the undersecretary of defense, that only about 0.37 percent troops had been discharged under DADT since the implementation of the policy.
Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California-Santa Barbara, said that the report confirms that DADT is harming military readiness.
Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness — a military advocacy group — said that while the money lost on enforcing DADT makes the case for repealing the regulations, the military is not enforcing the 1993 law, which passed Congress by veto-proof, bipartisan majorities and reaffirmed the idea that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”
“The military is training people who are not eligible to serve,” Donnelly said. “The problems associated with the high cost of DADT is related to the removal of the question, ‘Are you a homosexual?’ [and other forms of screening future service members]. The GAO report bolsters the case for strengthening the law. I would hope the Bush administration would deal with that.”
Donnelly said that the Pentagon is not being clear to service members what the actual law is regarding gays in the military.
“It’s very unfair to those who join the military who think they are eligible to serve,” Donnelly said. “Everyone has the opportunity to serve their country. I support that. But not everyone is eligible to serve in the armed forces. Groups that advocate repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ keep saying that gays can serve in the military as long as they are quiet about their homosexuality. That is a misstatement of the law.”
Smith, of the Military Community Services Network, said the GAO cost summary cannot estimate the impact DADT has had on gay service members who chose not to reenlist or retire early.
“These are people who served honorably and patriotically,” Smith said. “People who had a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge.”
Lara Ballard, the regional vice president for Region II of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a grassroots group of gay and lesbian veterans and allies, was one of those service members.
Ballard, a former Army officer who attended Georgetown University on a four-year, full tuition ROTC scholarship (which she estimates cost the taxpayers at the time about $60,000), chose to resign from the military because of the policies regarding gay service members.
“There are some career military folks who may say otherwise, but I think they would tell you that the folks who do stay suffer tremendous costs,” Ballard said.
William White, 20, was enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy for two years when he left because he was gay. He left just before signing a commitment with the Navy that would have required him to spend four years there.
White said he left shortly after a colleague of his saw him — in uniform — kiss a man he was dating at the time on the street. His boyfriend had just given him a bracelet for a present.
He said he would have had no problem making a career for himself in the Navy if he wasn’t prevented from doing so.
“Yeah, that training was tough and rigorous but I would have stayed regardless,” White said. Marjorie Rudinksy, 43, resigned from the military as a major in the Army after serving for 14 years. She said she resigned in 1996 because she was tired of “living as a half a person for 12-14 hours a day.”
“It just became too difficult so I resigned,” Rudinsky said. “I have to say it was the most difficult thing I had to do. I wasn’t being harassed by my commanders but the thought of being investigated or prosecuted was just too much.”
On the heels of the government report, Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) introduced legislation in the House of Representatives on Wednesday that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Meehan, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced the legislation — dubbed the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
While previous lawsuits challenging the military’s policy have upheld the ban put in place by the Clinton administration and Congress, those decisions were issued before the historic 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws, and a related decision earlier this month striking the sodomy ban from the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The GAO analysis was requested in 2004 by a bipartisan group of 22 members of Congress, according to SLDN.
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