Washington, December 03: US military leaders say America’s armed forces are ready for repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy which prohibits openly gay soldiers.
The US military’s top officer Admiral Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday that troops are ready for the change.
Mullen, who serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a Pentagon study has confirmed that the armed forces will not suffer any major disruption by allowing gays to serve in uniform.
The year-long study reportedly surveyed 400,000 active duty and reserve service members and 150,000 spouses and family members. It found that two-thirds of American troops saw few problems with the policy’s repeal.
Some 92 percent of active duty or reserve military personnel stated that their experiences serving with comrades they believed to be homosexual were either “very good,” “good,” or “neither good nor poor,” Sky News reported.
Mullen insisted that attitudes in the military have changed since the ban was adopted in 1993.
Mullen and Gates have also dismissed Republican senators’ call for a repeal of the ban to be postponed while the US is at war.
The study showed that the strongest opposition to the repeal came from the Marines force as well as older service members.
Republicans have called the study biased with veteran Senator John McCain saying that Marines and soldiers assigned to combat duties would quit the service if they had to serve alongside gays, AP reported.
——–Agencies