Since so few gay men and lesbians would come out after the lifting of the ban, it is even more unlikely that lifting the ban would diminish unit cohesion. In other words, in spite of the military's reasoning, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" does little to preserve unit cohesion.

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Although much research has been published that challenges the policy, the U.S. government and the military continue to support "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the law continues to devastate many glbtq service members' lives. According to the Service Members Legal Defense Network (SLDN)--a nonprofit organization that provides legal counsel to glbtq service members who have been discharged--1250 service members were discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2001. Between the law's implementation in 1993 and 2003, the U.S. military fired over 7,800 gltbq personnel. As of 2010, more than 13,000 servicemen had been discharged under this policy.

As activists have pointed out, not only does "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" harm individual service members, but it also costs the military and U.S. taxpayers dearly. Conservative estimates place the financial costs of the current policy at over $230 million for the decade between 1994 and 2003. But the cost to military effectiveness and governmental integrity may be even more staggering, if difficult to quantify.

As proponents of lifting the ban have pointed out, the ban promotes a hostile working environment, wastes crucial resources on unnecessary investigations, and forces many qualified service members to leave the military, depriving the services of many needed talents.

Moreover, by officially condoning discrimination, the military contradicts the democratic values it is supposed to protect and further alienates itself from the civilian sector. In 2002, a poll by the Gallup organization found that 72 percent of the public supports the right of gays and lesbians to serve in uniform.

A study by Laura Miller and John Allen Williams confirms this increasing schism between military leadership and civilians. It found that 56 percent of civilians responded affirmatively to a survey asking if they thought gay men and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in armed forces.

As Williams reported to the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, "The military is a reflection of the society it exists to defend, and American society is becoming more tolerant of different lifestyle choices. Sooner or later these changes will filter into the military."

Even sociologist Charles Moskos, the primary author of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," has begun to qualify his position. In January 2003, he announced that he would support allowing known gays and lesbians to serve in the military if the U.S. were to reinstitute the draft. "If an open gay said, 'I want to go into the army,' it would be his prerogative," Moskos said. "Of course, there would be problems with that, there would be hassles, but they probably could be overcome."

Moskos has claimed that the draft represents a higher virtue in his mind than the right of glbtq people to serve in a volunteer military, and in the context of a draft, he sees the gay ban as an easy way to avoid military service for any soldier who might identify as gay, truthfully or not. But his willingness to consider lifting the ban even in this particular case further casts doubt on the legitimacy of the exclusion of glbtq people from the military.

[Recent Developments

During his presidential campaign in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama called for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, raising hopes that repeal of the policy would be a top priority of his administration. Following his assumption of office in 2009, however, President Obama indicated that plans to repeal the policy would be delayed so that he could 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.

During the campaign, Obama intimated that he would end the ban by executive order. After the election, however, he insisted that only Congress could change the policy.

Although military law experts have concluded that the President as Commander-in-Chief has the authority to suspend discharges under the policy, and thereby ending it in practice, Obama--to the dismay of glbtq activists--has refused to exercise this authority.