After a first year of mostly punting gay rights down the road, President Obama's promise to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell at the State of Union felt reassuring, if long overdue.  Still, supporters of expanded gay rights probably weren't holding their breaths after nearly two decades of riding in the back of the bus of Democratic Party priorities.  Yet, within the week, Bob Gates and Mike Mullen affirmed their support for the Presidents decision before Congress.  They are temperamentally conservatively men so there was no grand speeches on equality, just support for a commission to explore changing the policy accompanied by an immediate change in enforcement, so that others could not "out" a gay member of the military.  So we will have to wait for a change that practically every subgroup in the country supports.  It was great comfort to hear Mike Mullen's statement of support on the subject: “No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

That is a lateral solution to a debate that has centered on equality versus efficiency, with one side indignant at waiting for an anachronism to change and the other insisting that it would damage unit cohesiveness during a time of war.  Mike Mullen cuts through that Gordian knot by reminding us of the high standards we demand and need from those trusted with our very safety.  The assumptions and observations implicit in this statement inescapably demonstrate how far we have come from 1993 on this subject.  

Two big assumptions underline Mullen's logic and thus defuse criticisms of gay rights: the inherentness of sexual orientation and the possibility of honorable homosexuality.  Mullen pointing out that soldiers must lie about who they are, rather than what they do; this nullifies the notion that gay is a choice.  That denial of the terms of debate even, has been forever lost to all but the most hardened on the right.  Second, Mullen assumes the possibility that gay men and women can defend the country with honor.  The notion of gay men as predators or perverts can not hold in rational, polite discussion.  NAMBLA exists, but Boy Scout bans that implicitly conflate every gay man with that minor strain of the larger community has fallen out of favor.  With these two assumptions many aspects of gay rights, adoption for example, become much easier to defend.

In his observations Mullen makes another two points: that it's a policy attacking a symptom, instead of the underlying problem  and that DADT itself damages unit cohesiveness.  Don't Ask, Don't Tell after all doesn't actually keep gay people out of the military.  Sure it keeps some of them out because they won't join or worse are removed, but it expressly assumes that gay people will serve.  Thus, the policy sees no problem with gay people as soldiers, only as topics of conversation.  If gays could not effectively serve than by all means Ask, Tell!  Instead, the problem seems to stem from discussing sexuality, as though soldiers can be around gay servicemen without a problem - until they know they are gay.  This is where the damage to unit cohesiveness enters the picture: Don't Ask, Don't Tell assumes that feigning straightness is enough to offset damage to unit cohesion due to lack of trust and prohibition on expression.  Forcing people to pretend, and others to suspect but, again, pretend that nothing is amiss is a cure worse than the disease (which I guess is the icky feeling straight people get when they think of gay sex).  Imagine trying to interact with coworkers with a sword hanging over your head or trying to develop a relationship with a coworker who you suspect might be gay.  Discussions of sex do not always belong in the workplace, but the foxhole that seem to be the setting of greatest hypothetical probably requires a level of familiarity that precludes not actually knowing quite a lot about who you are serving with.  

I have not been a soldier, but I've been a man for decades and the amount of discussion about sex in a typical locker rooms borders on exhaustive.  There is no end to how much men talk about sex, yet some how it must be avoided to not stumble on the topic of sexuality.  Allowing asking, and telling, might entail plenty of jocular conversations, but in my experience these usually are the mortar of morale, not its downfall.  These hypothetical Neanderthal soldiers so uncomfortable around gays that we can not risk it, might be surprised how easy it is once they realize they have been around gays for years and years.

President Obama's slow approach might be frustrating at times, but after a week like this, it's easy to defend.  The debate has moved in the right direction and this will change, for good.