{"id":1904,"date":"2025-01-05T18:44:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/?p=1904"},"modified":"2025-09-01T18:14:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T18:14:04","slug":"dont-ask-dont-tell-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/dont-ask-dont-tell-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The History of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Military Policy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You might be familiar with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy from the 1990s, but have you ever wondered how we got there? In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy, leader of the fear-based anti-communism campaign known as the \u201cRed Scare,\u201d launched the \u201cLavender\u00a0Scare.\u201d A small but loud group of people, McCarthy included, decided that\u00a0queer people posed a threat to national security (and were probably also\u00a0communist).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 27, 1953, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450,\u00a0banning anyone from the LGBTQ+ community from working in any\u00a0government job. Over the course of the year, the State Department reported\u00a0firing 425 employees. Across the entire government, over 5,000 people were\u00a0fired (many were outed) \u2013 including straight people who were perceived as\u00a0possibly being gay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In 1973, a federal judge reversed the EO and ruled that people cannot be\u00a0fired from government positions based on sexual orientation. In 1995,\u00a0President Clinton signed \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell,\u201d which didn\u2019t do anything\u00a0except tolerate queer people in government positions as long as they didn\u2019t\u00a0actually mention anything about their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Clinton\u2019s law essentially was official lingo for \u201cfine, you can sit with\u00a0us, but you aren\u2019t allowed to be yourself\u201d under penalty of losing military\u00a0benefits. People who refused to hide their sexuality were discharged from\u00a0the military. These brave people chose themselves and the people they loved\u00a0over healthcare, education, home loan assistance, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Obama finally repealed the DADT in September of 2011, which\u00a0became official in December of that year. In 2015, Secretary of State John\u00a0Kerry issued a public apology for the damage done by the mass layoffs. In\u00a02019, the Senate introduced the LOVE Act to investigate the terminations of\u00a0government employees under the Lavender Scare. The Senate voted to send\u00a0it to the Foreign Relations Committee at that time. But as of summer 2024,\u00a0the committee has done nothing on it<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2021, NPR reported that all 100,000+\u00a0members of the military who were discharged as \u201cother\u00a0than honorable\u201d were finally granted their full military\u00a0benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a<\/a><\/figure>
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Mission Possible: The Story of Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by C. Dixon Osburn<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson<\/h2>\n<\/div>
\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/a><\/figure>
\n

The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America by Eric Cervini<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Serving in Silence by Margarethe Cammermeyer with Chris Fisher<\/h2>\n<\/div>
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The History of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Military Policy You might be familiar with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy from the 1990s, but have you ever wondered how we got there? In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy, leader of the fear-based anti-communism campaign known as the \u201cRed Scare,\u201d launched the \u201cLavender\u00a0Scare.\u201d A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lgbtq-history","category-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1913,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/1913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theradicalagenda.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}