Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

The Army, Navy and Air Force have all created new websites with official information about DADT.  The Navy’s, called ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Implementation Information” is here, the Army’s is here, and the Air Force’s is here.

Given that Columbia University has now signed an agreement with the Navy to bring NROTC (Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps) back onto the Columbia campus, the Navy’s DADT page is of particular interest.

The page is basically a shell for general Navy news and information.  Only if you really poke around for a while and click on a video link with “News of the Day” as part of the Navy’s “Informing the Fleet” video news program would you find anything to do with DADT – and the DADT story isn’t the lead story at that (the lead is a story about the Navy’s Green Hornet fighter plane that runs on more efficient fuel that the regular Navy planes).  Then we get news of DADT – and the news is not about how well the Navy is doing in preparing the fleet for repeal of DADT, about training in connection there with, or anything about repeal at all.  Rather the story reports on new rules regulating the investigation and discharge of Naval personnel charged with homosexual conduct, NAVADMIN 137/10.  So the news about DADT easiest to find on the site is about how DADT is still being enforced and homosexual sailors are being actively discharged.  Not so good on the “repeal” issue.

Another news story, buried on the page and even harder to find than the first, reports on the Chief Naval Officer’s testimony to the Congress on repeal of DADT last year.  But there’s nothing new on what the Navy is doing to facilitate repeal.

A search of the page’s Information Index for either “Don’t Ask Don’t Tel” or “Homosexual” turns up nothing else.

As for the Army’s new site, Tony Infanti summarizes a few interesting points from the FAQ section:

1. Unrelated to the repeal of DADT, courts have held that consensual sodomy is punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice only under limited circumstances (described in the FAQs).

2. Soldiers can’t get out of the Army because they object to the repeal of DADT.

3. A soldier can’t refuse to share accommodations with a lesbian, gay, or bisexual soldier.

4. No trans soldiers before or after the repeal of DADT.

5. LGB soldiers get only the same benefits as single soldiers.

I’ll reiterate my earlier dismay at Columbia, and other universities, rush to welcome the military back to a full presence on our campuses on the false notion that DADT has been repealed.