Excerpt from a good essay about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at Salon.com:
Muller, a native of the Franklin County town of Ozark (pop. 3,500), spent parts of two years in Afghanistan as a bomb technician, disabling booby traps and IEDs before a superior officer’s implacable hostility to the “open secret” of his homosexuality led to his honorable discharge.
If there’s a more critical or dangerous job in today’s Army than defusing bombs, it’s hard to think what it might be. The fact that he’s still alive is all the testimony one needs to Muller’s skill and courage. For the nation to lose his services on account of an irrational prejudice is simply a damn shame. There’s really not a whole lot more to say about it.
What irritated me most about Gates’s remarks the other day was that we would have to spend time and money educating bigots (oh, sorry, people whose views are based on “unfamiliarity” and “stereotypes”). Those servicemen and women will simply have to make the choice, as everyone in civilian life does, whether their prejudices are important enough to them that they would quit the armed services or resign their commission rather than attempt to work with openly gay and lesbian troops.