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Don't Ask Don't Tell isn't working so well

• Published March 14, 2009

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Silent and celibate. That is how gay and lesbian members of the military serve.

It’s the law: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“You can’t share your life with a loved one. You have to lie. You have to hide,” Admiral Alan Steinman, the highest-ranking gay veteran in the nation told me. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell forces them to lie about who they are.”

Steinman, who lives in DuPont, retired from the Coast Guard after 25 years in 1997. He served under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy for a few years prior to his retirement.

“I’m sort of a poster boy for what Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell leads you to believe,” Steinman said.

“Think about all the things that occur in your life: ‘What did you do this weekend? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a girlfriend?’ ” Steinman said. “The law requires them to be silent and celibate.”

An East Coast-based lieutenant commander currently active in the Navy, who asked that his name and some personal details be withheld so he can keep his job, echoed those thoughts in his conversation with me.

“The difficult part about it is that people that I work with will ask questions about my personal life,” he said. “When I’m hesitant to share that with them, they view it as standoffish. It’s just that I can’t share it with them. There’s a distance between me and the people that I work with.”

But with luck — and intense perseverance from GLBT advocates — the law could be overturned under the Obama Administration.

U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., reintroduced legislation last week to overturn the law. And President Barack Obama lists it as a goal of his administration on www.whitehouse.gov. Last week, he began quietly conferring with officials about the policy.

I believe Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is one of the more ludicrous laws on record — a product of the Clinton Administration. Introduced in 1993, it was meant to protect gays in the military. But the policy has proven to hamper combat readiness — one of the key reasons it was created.

Prior to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the military banned gays and lesbians from serving in the military.