John M.
Shalikashvili, retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, says Congress should give "serious
reconsideration" to ending the ban on openly
gay service members. Shalikashvili, who supported the "don't
ask, don't tell" policy when it was put into place in 1993,
writes in an op-ed for Tuesday's New York Times
that "I now believe that if gay men and
lesbians served openly in the United States military,
they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed
forces." He goes on to say that "our military has
been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle
East, and we must welcome the service of any American
who is willing and able to do the job."
Shalikashvili,
who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 1993 to 1997,
joins other senior retired military officers who have called
for repeal of the gay ban. In May 2006, Lt. Gen.
Claudia Kennedy, USA (Ret.), the first female
three-star officer in Army history, called the law "a
hollow policy that serves no useful purpose."
Lt. Gen. Daniel W. Christman, former superintendent of
West Point, recently told The New York Times that
"it is clear that national attitudes toward
this issue have evolved considerably in the last
decade. This has been led by a new generation of service
members who take a more relaxed and tolerant view
toward homosexuality." Retired admiral John
Hutson, who currently serves as dean of Franklin Pierce Law
School, also recently wrote that "it would be a great
tragedy if we didn't take advantage of [the]
chance to correct a flawed policy."
In 2003 two
retired generals and an admiral came out in The New York
Times, and in November 2006 14 senior retired
military officers urged the first circuit court of appeals
to overturn the ban. They wrote that the law "undermines the
military's ability to fulfill its primary mission of
providing national security by discouraging the
enlistment of gay persons qualified to serve their
country and by expelling from the military those who have
served with honor." (The Advocate)