Efficacy or Justice? Overturning the Ban

Justice is the great interest man on earth. Wherever her temple stands, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress our race. --Words inscribed on the Department Justice building, Washington, D.C. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THAT A SERVING OFFICER can not only publish but also win an award for an article calling on the National Command Authority to end the 1993 ban against openly gay persons in the military is a substantial sign change. Air Force Colonel Om Prakash's essay Efficacy 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' appeared in Joint Force Quarterly this last October. The essay had previously won the 2009 Secretary Defense National Essay Competition. To many this seems like a significant move forward toward social justice. I join those who salute Prakash's achievement. His article makes a welcome contribution to the public conversation on this important topic, but I don't think the article puts the case in the best light. By framing the debate over gays in the military in terms Prakash adopts the general tone the national conversation on Don't Ask, Don't Tell in recent years. Nathaniel Frank's 2004 op-ed in the New York Times was, perhaps, the first to cast the conversation in terms lost money by noting the military was kicking out expensive and scarce Arabic linguists because they were gay. (1) Many others took up this line reasoning. And Prakash is right to remind us that some 12,500 persons have been discharged under the law and that this hemorrhage talent constitutes a considerable expense in both personnel and treasure, which it does. (2) However, the most compelling reason for overturning the ban is not efficacy, but justice. Efficacy Prakash quotes an unnamed general who says, Experiments within the Army in the solution social problems are fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale. (3) This statement rather neatly sums up objections to overturning the ban. Senior leaders have reflexively cried Wolf about gays in the military since the idea gained public attention, and it has seemed obvious to most them that permitting openly gay citizens in the uniformed ranks would so undermine good order and discipline that the military's ability to defend the Nation would be in doubt. Prakash tells us that the research shows this isn't so, and he points out that many principal U.S. allies around the world--Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel and others--already permit gays to serve openly in the military, and this has caused scarcely a ripple in military society and military effectiveness. (4) However, the reflexive resistance American leaders has held sway. We have allowed the debate to be framed on military terms alone, and we have trusted unexamined judgments. Had we done this years ago, the United States might well still be defended by an Army white males sans women or color. We must remember guns are just instruments, and in a democracy, they are tools meant to serve ideals. Our cherished documents do not celebrate the pursuit life, liberty, and efficacy. Nor do they cede judgments about constitutional principle to military officers. Observers often note that democracy is inefficient, so much so that one can sometimes wonder whoever thought that government of the people, for the people, and by the people was a good idea in the first place. Then we compare democracy to other forms government and see that it places great value on an individual citizen's right to frame his own plan life, to choose what seems best to him. And this ability to choose, to live in liberty, emerges as the great trumping ideal, and we decide, after all, that democracy is effective. It follows, then, that a military serving a democracy will recognize that efficiency cannot be its ultimate ideal. The argument that focuses on the efficiency gays in the military is wrong on two counts. …

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