EQUAL RIGHTS US military should move beyond ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

Jeff Schmalz can keep a secret. In fact, he kept a secret for a quarter-century to hold down the lid on a potentially explosive situation.

Schmalz, 49, worked for the Army National Guard. He didn’t tell anyone there that he was gay because the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy of the American military dictated that would be thrown out without a pension.

By 2005, however, Schmalz, a Massachusetts resident, was able to marry his partner under that state’s gay marriage law. So he asked for a discharge and went on with his life. Schmalz, other veterans, and human rights’ advocates are calling for a repeal of the "don’t ask, don’t tell" (DADT) policy.

Even as a Democrat, I have to admit that the DADT fiasco was the second dumbest sexually related act of the Clinton presidency. As far as lesbians and gay men are concerned, it is the dumbest.

The gay and lesbian community supported Clinton’s pledges that ensured them equal participation in society. One such promise said the government would get real about the estimated 65,000 homosexual and bisexual soldiers serving in the US Armed Forces. That Human Rights Campaign estimate is coupled with another: the 10,000 thrown out since DADT went into effect in 1993.

The Clinton policy is worse than what existed before it, when superiors were not forced to discharge those known to be gay. Under DADT gay soldiers and sailors must face dishonorable discharge if they are outed in any way.

Married soldiers wear wedding rings or keep photographs of their spouses and kids on their locker door, but gays and lesbians cannot. Heterosexuals in the military wonder aloud what it will be like to be lovingly reunited with their partners back home, or express sadness about missing their lovers, while gays and lesbian soldiers must remain silent.

So-called "straight" men and women look forward to R&R, to let their hair down in a local pub with friends and maybe some locals they may pick up for the evening. Those who would like to go to a gay bar for the same release risk being drummed out of the corps in disgrace.

The military has a perverse and perverted view of what is acceptable sexual behavior. It overlooks and even silently approves of the kind of "manly" Tailhook scandals that allow "real men " to abuse and degrade women within their ranks as well as civilians. It has also turned a blind eye and condoned by its silence the degradation and abuse — sometimes to the death — of its gay and lesbian comrades in arms.

So Jeff Schmalz, having devoted half his life to the Army National Guard, is right to protest. With a war raging in which the men and women on the ground probably care little about who sleeps with whom, the misguided military would be wise to listen.