Straight away: don't ask, don't tell is on its way out, and not a moment too soon.

• Author: O'Donnell, Michael

Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America

by Nathaniel Frank

Thomas Dunne Books, 368 pp.

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One of the ugliest moments of the 2008 presidential campaign involved a room full of people booing a gay general. During the Republican CNN/YouTube debate in November 2007, retired Brigadier General Keith Kerr asked a question by video. In a gravelly voice, he cited his forty-three years of military service and credentials, and then announced his homosexuality and pointedly asked why American soldiers were not professional enough to serve alongside gays and lesbians. After Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney answered with rote bromides about the feared impact of gay troops on "unit cohesion," the moderator asked Kerr whether he felt he'd gotten an answer. With dignity and not a little courage standing there holding the wrong war drum, Kerr quietly began to explain why he hadn't, and that's when the first arrows flew. First his microphone was switched off--possibly by accident--only to be hastily switched on again at the moderator's direction. Then the jeers began, scattered at first but growing louder until Kerr stopped talking. John McCain (he of truth-to-power lore) was the only candidate to speak after Kerr, but he said that the don't ask, don't tell policy was working. None of the candidates acknowledged that an American general had just been shouted down on national television.

Bigotry against gays and lesbians, even those in uniform, sadly persists in this country. As one of the great moral and cultural problems of our time, it can't be solved at a stroke, but McCain's line about don't ask, don't tell can at least be shown up for the nonsense that it is. Only the most removed, unconcerned anti-empiricist could say that the policy--which turned fifteen on March 1--has been anything less than a disaster. Discharges for homosexuality have skyrocketed under it: more than 12,000 gay men and women, including fifty-eight Arab-language specialists, have been dismissed since 1994, many of them during a time of military exigency, recruiting shortfalls, and harsh stopgap measures. The policy has prompted witch hunts, loosened restrictions on service by ex-convicts, tarnished the military's image, and encouraged homophobia rather than eradicating it. And don't ask, don't tell is very unpopular: 75 percent of Americans favor letting gay troops serve openly, and 104 retired admirals and...