Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. This week’s episode closes out a 3-episode arc covering Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We’re going to cover the eventual repeal of the policy, and uncover some of the societal attitudes—particularly how they’ve shifted over the years. The underlying justifications for DADT have been subjected to increasing suspicion and outright rejection by the early 21st century. Mounting evidence obtained from the integration efforts of foreign militaries, surveys of U.S. military personnel, and studies conducted by the DoD  gave credence to the view that the presence of open homosexuals within the military would not be detrimental at all to the armed forces. A DoD study conducted on the behest of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2010 supports this most.The DoD working group conducting the study considered the impact that lifting the ban would have on unit cohesion and effectiveness, good order and discipline, and military morale. The study included a survey that revealed significant differences between respondents who believed they had served with homosexual troops and those who did not believe they had.In analyzing such data, the DoD working group concluded that it was actually generalized perceptions of homosexual troops that led to the perceived unrest that would occur without DADT. Ultimately, the study deemed the overall risk to military effectiveness of lifting the ban to be low. Citing the ability of the armed forces to adjust to the previous integration of African-Americans and women, the DoD study asserted that the United States military could adjust as had it before in history without an impending serious effect.In March 2005, Rep. Martin T. Meehan introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act in the House. It aimed "to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as 'Don't ask, don't tell,' with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation". As of 2006, it had 105 Democrats and 4 Republicans as co-sponsors. He introduced the bill again in 2007 and 2009.During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Senator Barack Obama advocated a full repeal of the laws barring gays and lesbians from serving in the military. Nineteen days after his election, Obama's advisers announced that plans to repeal the policy might be delayed until 2010, because Obama "first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus, and then present legislation to Congress". As president he advocated a policy change to allow gay personnel to serve openly in the armed forces, stating that the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops expelled from the military, including language experts fluent in Arabic, because of DADT. On the eve of the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., October 10, 2009, Obama stated in a speech before the Human Rights Campaign that he would end the ban, but he offered no timetable. Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union Address: "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are." This statement was quickly followed up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen voicing their support for a repeal of DADT.Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010Democrats in both houses of Congress first attempted to end DADT by amending the Defense Authorization Act. On May 27, 2010, on a 234–194 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Murphy amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. It provided for repeal of the DADT policy and created a process for lifting the policy, including a U.S. Department of Defense study and certification by key officials that the change in policy would not harm military readiness followed by a waiting period of 60 days. The amended defense bill passed the House on May 28, 2010. On September 21, 2010, John McCain led a successful filibuster against the debate on the Defense Authorization Act, in which 56 Senators voted to end debate, four short of the 60 votes required. Some advocates for repeal, including the Palm Center, OutServe, and Knights Out, opposed any attempt to block the passage of NDAA if it failed to include DADT repeal language. The Human Rights Campaign, the Center for American Progress, Servicemembers United and SLDN refused to concede that possibility.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit, Collins v. United States, against the Department of Defense in November 2010 seeking full compensation for those discharged under the policy.On November 30, 2010, the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) report authored by Jeh C. Johnson, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and Army General Carter F. Ham. It outlined a path to the implementation of repeal of DADT. The report indicated that there was a low risk of service disruptions due to repealing the ban, provided time was provided for proper implementation and training. It included the results of a survey of 115,000 active-duty and reserve service members. Across all service branches, 30 percent thought that integrating gays into the military would have negative consequences. In the Marine Corps and combat specialties, the percentage with that negative assessment ranged from 40 to 60 percent. The CRWG also said that 69 percent of all those surveyed believed they had already worked with a gay or lesbian and of those, 92 percent reported that the impact of that person's presence was positive or neutral. The same day, in response to the CRWG, 30 professors and scholars, most from military institutions, issued a joint statement saying that the CRWG "echoes more than 20 studies, including studies by military researchers, all of which reach the same conclusion: allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly will not harm the military .... We hope that our collective statement underscores that the debate about the evidence is now officially over...." The Family Research Council's president, Tony Perkins, interpreted the CRWG data differently, writing that it "reveals that 40 percent of Marines and 25 percent of the Army could leave".Gates encouraged Congress to act quickly to repeal the law so that the military could carefully adjust rather than face a court decision requiring it to lift the policy immediately. The United States Senate held two days of hearings on December 2 and 3, 2010, to consider the CRWG report. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen urged immediate repeal. The heads of the Marine Corps, Army, and Navy all advised against immediate repeal and expressed varied views on its eventual repeal. Oliver North, writing in National Review the next week, said that Gates' testimony showed "a deeply misguided commitment to political correctness". He interpreted the CRWG's data as indicating a high risk that large numbers of resignations would follow the repeal of DADT. Service members, especially combat troops, he wrote, "deserve better than to be treated like lab rats in Mr. Obama's radical social experiment".On December 9, 2010, another filibuster prevented debate on the Defense Authorization Act. In response to that vote, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced a bill that included the policy-related portions of the Defense Authorization Act that they considered more likely to pass as a stand-alone bill. It passed the House on a vote of 250 to 175 on December 15, 2010. On December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to end debate on its version of the bill by a cloture vote of 63–33. The final Senate vote was held later that same day, with the measure passing by a vote of 65–31.U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released a statement following the vote indicating that the planning for implementation of a policy repeal would begin right away and would continue until Gates certified that conditions were met for orderly repeal of the policy. President Obama signed the repeal into law on December 22, 2010.Implementation of repealThe repeal act established a process for ending the DADT policy. The President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were required to certify in writing that they had reviewed the Pentagon's report on the effects of DADT repeal, that the appropriate regulations had been reviewed and drafted, and that implementation of repeal regulations "is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces". Once certification was given, DADT would be lifted after a 60-day waiting period.Representative Duncan D. Hunter announced plans in January 2011 to introduce a bill designed to delay the end of DADT. His proposed legislation required all of the chiefs of the armed services to submit the certification at the time required only of the President, Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs Chairman. In April, Perkins of the Family Research Council argued that the Pentagon was misrepresenting its own survey data and that hearings by the House Armed Services Committee, now under Republican control, could persuade Obama to withhold certification. Congressional efforts to prevent the change in policy from going into effect continued into May and June 2011.On January 29, 2011, Pentagon officials stated that the training process to prepare troops for the end of DADT would begin in February and would proceed quickly, though they suggested that it might not be completed in 2011. On the same day, the DOD announced it would not offer any additional compensation to service members who had been discharged under DADT, who received half of the separatio