When I raised the fact that it apparently had...
When I raised the fact that it apparently had cost the military $500 million to kick 17,000 homosexuals out of the service in the previous decade, despite a government report saying there was no reason to believe they could not serve effectively, the chiefs replied that it was worth it to preserve unit cohesion and morale

The chief of naval operations, Admiral Frank Kelso, said the navy had the greatest practical problems, given the close and isolated living arrangements on shipsThe army chief, General Gordon Sullivan, and UAir Force General Merrill McPeak were opposed, tooBut the most adamant opponent was the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Carl MundyHe was concerned about more than appearances and practicalitiesHe believed that homosexuality was immoral, and that if gays were permitted to serve openly, the military would be condoning immoral behavior and could no longer attract the finest young AmericansI disagreed with Mundy, but I liked himIn fact, I liked and respected them allThey had given me their honest opinions, yet had made it clear that if I ordered them to take action theyd do the best job they could, although if called to testify before Congress they would have to state their views frankly

A couple of days later, I had another night meeting on the issue, with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Senators Sam Nunn, James Exon, Carl Levin, Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy, Bob Graham, Jeff Bingaman, John Glenn, Richard Shelby, Joe Lieberman, and Chuck RobbNunn, while opposed to my position, had agreed to the six-month prada clutch delaySome of my staffers were upset with him for his early and forceful opposition, but I wasnt; after all, he was personally conservative, and as chairman of the committee, he honored the military culture and saw it as his duty to protect itCharlie Moskos, the Northwestern University sociologist who had worked with Nunn and me on the DLC national-service proposal and who said he had known a gay officer during the Korean War, was also against lifting the ban, saying that it preserved the expectation of privacy to which soldiers living in close quarters were entitledMoskos said we should stick with what the great majority of military people wanted, because the main thing we needed in the military was the ability and willingness to fightThe problem I saw with his argument, and Sam Nunns, is that they could have been used with equal force against Trumans order on integration or against current efforts to open more positions to women in the military

Senator Byrd took a harder line than Nunn, echoing what I had heard from General MundyHe believed homosexuality was a sin; said he would never let his grandson, whom he adored, join a military that admitted gays; and asserted that one reason the Roman Empire fell was the acceptance of pervasive homosexual conduct in the Roman legions from Julius Caesar on downIn contrast to Byrd and Nunn, Chuck Robb, who was conservative on many issues and had survived heated combat in Vietnam, supported my position, based on his wartime contact with men who were both gay and braveHe wasnt the only Vietnam combat veteran in Congress who felt that chanel knock off purse way

The cultural divide was partly, but not completely, partisan and generationalSome younger Democrats opposed lifting the ban, while some older Republicans were for lifting it, including Lawrence Korb and Barry GoldwaterKorb, who had enforced the ban as an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, said it was not necessary for maintaining the quality and strength of our forcesGoldwater, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a veteran, and the founder of the Arizona National Guard, was an old-fashioned conservative with libertarian instinctsIn a statement published in the Washington Post, he said that allowing gays to serve was not a call for cultural license but a reaffirmation of the American value of extending opportunity to responsible citizens and limiting the reach of government into peoples private livesIn his typically blunt way, he said he didnt care whether a soldier was straight, but whether he could shoot straight

As things turned out, Goldwaters support and all my arguments were academicThe House passed a resolution opposing my position by more than three to oneThe Senate opposition was not as great but was still substantialThat meant that if I persisted, the Congress would overturn my position with an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that I couldnt easily veto, and even if I did, the veto would be overridden in both houses

While all this was going on, I saw a poll showing that by 48 to 45 percent the public disagreed with my positionThe numbers didnt look too bad for such a controversial issue, but they were, necklace tiffany and they showed why Congress thought it was a dead-bang loser for themOnly 16 percent of the electorate strongly approved of lifting the ban, while 33 percent very strongly disapprovedThose were the people whose votes could be influenced by a congressmans positionIts hard to get politicians in swing districts to take a 17 percent deficit on any issue into an electionInterestingly, the biggest divisions were these: self-identified born-again Christians opposed my position 70 to 22 percent, while people who said they knew homosexuals personally approved of it 66 to 33 percent

With congressional defeat inevitable, Les Aspin worked with Colin Powell and the Joint Chiefs on a compromiseAlmost exactly six months later, on July 19, I went to the National Defense University at Fort McNair to announce it to the officers in attendanceDont ask, dont tell basically said that if you say youre gay, its presumed that you intend to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and you can be removed, unless you can convince your commander youre celibate and therefore not in violation of the codeBut if you dont say youre gay, the following things will not lead to your removal: marching in a gay-rights parade in civilian clothes; hanging out in gay bars or with known homosexuals; being on homosexual mailing lists; and living with a person of the same sex who is the beneficiary of your life insurance policyOn paper, the military had moved a long way, to live and let live, while holding on to the idea that it couldnt acknowledge gays without approving of homosexuality and compromising louis vuitton denim purse morale and cohesionIn practice it often didnt work out that wayMany anti-gay officers simply ignored the new policy and worked even harder to root out homosexuals, costing the military millions of dollars that would have been far better spent making America more secure

In the short run, I got the worst of both worldsI lost the fight, and the gay community was highly critical of me for the compromise, simply refusing to acknowledge the consequences of having so little support in Congress, and giving me little credit for lifting another ban on gays, the ban against serving in critical national security positions, or for the substantial number of gays and lesbians who were working throughout the administrationBy contrast, Senator Dole won bigBy raising the issue early, and repeatedly, he guaranteed it so much publicity that it appeared I was working on little else, which caused a lot of Americans who had elected me to fix the economy to wonder what on earth I was doing and whether theyd made a mistake

I was finding it a challenge to keep another campaign commitment: cutting the White House staff by 25 percentIt was a nightmare for Mack McLarty, especially since we had a more ambitious agenda than the previous administrations and were getting more than twice as much mailOn February 9, just a week before I was slated to announce my economic program, I proposed the 25 percent reduction, cutting the staff by 350 people, down to 1,044 employeesEverybody took a hit; even Hillarys office would be smaller than Barbara Bushs, though she would take on greater balenciaga blue responsibilitie