Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Essay Example

It is important to note that at the time of implementation, this was only a policy, and not a law! According to it, neither was anybody allowed to investigate the sexual orientation of the members in service in US military, nor the members would discuss it with anybody. Thus, if gays and lesbians were to serve in the US military, they would have to keep their sexual concerns unrevealed. Contrary to this policy, the law did not prevent the US military soldiers from being interrogated about their sexual orientation (Burrelli).

This has conventionally remained a very controversial subject on political grounds. For a long time, the number of US military soldiers who would be discharged for the charge of homosexuality was readily dropping until 1993. From 1993 onwards, US military soldiers have increasingly been discharged for being homosexual till 2001. In order to put forward a sufficiently comprehensive account of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, it is imperative that the reaction of American nation towards the policy is studied.

According to (Mccabe), the opinion of public regarding the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy can be classified into three types. . The three types of opinions can be referred to in one word as “permissive”, “restrictive” and “prohibitive” respectively (Mccabe). Two main questions have conventionally been put in front of public to offer their opinion upon in the public polls. One of them inquires if the gays and lesbians should be allowed to openly serve the US military. This question essentially asks the public to convey their opinion with the condition that the servitude is “open”.

Thus, if someone answers in negative, it is not clear if he/she would have maintained the same response for those gays and lesbians who would keep their sexual orientation unrevealed while serving in the US military. In this way, the wording used in aforementioned question distinguishes the permissible opinion from the restrictive and prohibitive opinions. The second question asks the public if gays and lesbians should or should not be allowed to serve the US military without any indication of open or restricted expression of sexuality.

In this case, when someone says that they should be allowed to serve, it is not clear if he/she would maintain the same response if the question mentioned that the gays and lesbians would openly express their sexual orientation. In this way, this statement distinguishes the prohibitive opinion from the permissive and restrictive opinions. Since the time of implementation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, a number of Washington Post polls and ABC News polls have been conducted in which the American public was asked to respond to the two aforementioned questions simultaneously.

Comparison of the findings of these surveys makes it possible for one to simultaneously analyze