Pentagon Report Reveals that Fear of Gay Troops Was Overblown and Wrong
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A report by the think tank commissioned by the Pentagon to examine the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy has concluded after ten years that fears about having gays serve in the armed forces were vastly overblown and just plain wrong.
A decade after the services first allowed gay and lesbian troops to serve openly, a report from the Joint Staff found that concerns about combat effectiveness and unit cohesion were basically unfounded.
That’s the conclusion of a 196-page document published in 2021 by the Joint History and Research Office, recently brought to light by the Palm Center, a think tank that studies U.S. military personnel policy.
“The Commandant said he had no regrets about opposing the change during wartime, explaining that he had felt obliged to set aside his personal opinions and represent the majority view held by combat Marines who worried that repeal might diminish their units’ cohesion and battlefield effectiveness,” the report states, citing comments by the Marine Corps’ then-top officer, Gen. Jim Amos. “In retrospect, although convinced that he had done what he needed to do at the time, Amos acknowledged that his concern was ‘misplaced.’ ”
Those sentiments were echoed two years later in a memo from Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
“Following the 1-year anniversary of repeal, the Combatant Commanders have provided their assessments of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and report no impact to military readiness, effectiveness, or unit cohesion of the Joint Force,” he wrote.
