Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Floor Speech

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I would yield myself up to 8 minutes of the time on our side.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank Chairman Levin, Senator Udall of Colorado, and Senator Webb for their informed and informative remarks in support of the motion to concur with the House in regard to repealing the policy that has come to be known as don't ask, don't tell.

I think that in considering this matter today we have an opportunity not just to right a wrong, not just to honor the service of a group of American patriots who happen to be gay and lesbian, not just to make our military more effective, but to advance the values that the Founders of our country articulated in our original American documents.

I want to talk very briefly about that, because it is important to set what we are doing here in the context of history. From the beginning, America has been a different Nation. We did not define ourselves based on our borders. Our Founders defined America based on our values, and none stated more powerfully than those words in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that: There are self-evident truths. This is a political statement, a constitutional statement, but also a religious statement.

There are self-evident truths, and one of them is that all of us are created equal and endowed by our Creator with those unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the second paragraph, our Founders say, in the Declaration, that they are forming this new government, America, in order to secure those rights to life and liberty. The sad fact is, at the moment they adopted the Declaration of Independence, these rights were not enjoyed for a lot of Americans, including, of course, the slaves, most of all, but women had no legal rights to speak of.

One way I think I like to look at American history is as a journey to realize, generation after generation, in a more perfect way, to make ours a more perfect Union, the rights given in the Declaration of Independence, the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence and, of course, with a lot of pain and turmoil we have done that with regard to race in our country, certainly true with regard to women.

We have created an ethic. It is the promise of America, but in some sense it is what we also call the American dream, that in this country you are judged not by who you are but how you perform. In this country, no matter where you were born or how you were born, the fact is you are able to go--if you play by the rules and you work hard, you should be able to go as far as your talents will take you, not any characteristic that one might associate with you, any adjective that one might put before the noun ``American'' whether it is White American, Black American, Christian, Jewish American, gay or straight American, Latino, or European American, that you should be entitled to go as far as your talents and your commitment to our country will take you.

In our generation, it seems to me that the movement to realize the promise of the Declaration has been one of the places that has been most at the forefront and realized most significantly is in regard to gay and lesbian Americans, to promise that, in our time, we will guarantee, as a matter of law, that no one will be denied equal opportunity based on their sexual orientation. They will be judged by the way they live and the way they perform their jobs. That is why the existing don't ask, don't tell policy is, in my opinion, inconsistent with basic American values.

It is not only bad for the military, it is inconsistent with our values. I want to say it is particularly bad for the military, because in our society, the American military is, in my opinion, the one institution that still commands the respect and trust of the American people, because it lives by American values. It fights for American values. It is committed to a larger cause and not divided by any division, including party.

So to force this policy as the don't ask, don't tell does on our military is to force them to be less than they want to be, and less than they can be. Admiral Mullen, the No. 1 uniformed military officer in our country today, said very powerfully:

We--

The military--

are an institution that values integrity, and then asks other people to join us, work with us, fight with us, die with us, and lie about who they are the whole time they are in the military.

That, Admiral Mullin says, is what does not make any sense to me. I agree. The fact is this is not just a theory we are talking about. The fact is that under the don't ask, don't tell policy, more than 14,000 members of our military have been discharged since

1993, not because they performed their military responsibilities inadequately, not because they violated the very demanding code of personal conduct in the military, but simply because of their sexual orientation.

I think if you view this as an issue, that can be controversial in the realm of rhetoric or theory. But if you face those 14,000--and I have talked to a lot of them--yesterday, an Air Force major, commanding more than 200 members of the Air Force--all sorts of commendations, tossed out simply because someone did not like him, found out he was gay, and he was pushed out.

A student at one of the academies, at the top of his class, same thing. Because of his sexual orientation, tossed out. You know we spend, by one estimate, more than half a billion dollars training those 14,000 members of the American military that we discharged solely because of their sexual orientation. What a waste. These people simply want to serve their country.

I know you, Mr. President, have probably had the same experience I have. When you talk to any of the 14,000, why are they lobbying, pleading with us to repeal don't ask, don't tell? They want to go back and serve our country. They want to put their lives on the line for our security and our freedoms. Does it make any sense to say no to them simply because of a private part of their person?

In the survey that was done as part of the Pentagon report, there are some remarkable numbers. One of them is that of the gay and lesbian members of our military surveyed, only 15 percent said they would come out, that they would reveal their sexual orientation. One of them was quoted as saying, and I paraphrase: That is private. That is not part of my responsibility in the military. None of us do that in the military.

And, incidentally, when, as I hope and pray don't ask, don't tell is repealed, gay and lesbian members of the military, just as straight members, will be held to the highest demands and standards of the military code of conduct. If they are involved in any inappropriate behavior, they will be disciplined.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes of the time we have.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The other significant number in the survey I thought was this: Well over two-thirds of the members of our military surveyed, 120-some-odd thousand surveyed, said that they thought the military was ready for this change.

I know there has been talk about the marines. There is a fascinating number about the marines. A significant number of the marines are worried about this change in policy. But among those marines who have served in marine units with gay and lesbian marines, 84 percent say no problem. Why? Because we do not care, when we are out in combat, what somebody's race or gender or ethnicity or religion or sexual orientation is; all we care is whether they have got our back and they are a good member of the unit.

My friends have said that this simply--if, and I hope when this measure passes, and don't ask, don't tell is repealed, it authorizes the repeal, but it does not finish it. It starts a deliberative process in which, without time limit, the Secretary of Defense, the President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have to decide that it is time for the repeal to occur. It is a very reasonable process. And it saves the military, as Secretary Gates has said over and over again, from facing an order from a court that forces the military to do this immediately.

Bottom line, and I will speak personally here, I was privileged about 10 years ago--incidentally, thinking of the DREAM Act, I am a grandchild of four immigrants to America. Could they have ever dreamed that I would end up a Senator--2,000 have had the opportunity--to be the first Jewish American to run on a national ticket?

I will never forget. Someone called me up that day and said how thrilled they were, a member of another minority group, and said: You know, Joe, here is what is significant. When a barrier falls for one group of Americans, the doors of opportunity open wider for all Americans.

I think we have that opportunity today to make our great country even greater, and our best-in-the-world military even better.

I yield the floor.

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