Good article about how many more soldiers/sailors and officers are fine with gays serving these days.
(My favorite part is when it calls them "liberal"!
)
More tolerance for gay troops as end of 'don't ask, don't tell' is debated - washingtonpost.com
More tolerance for gay troops as end of 'don't ask, don't tell' is debated
By Ernesto Londoño
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
BAGHDAD -- Days before a deployment to Iraq last year, the 26-year-old soldier's sergeant told his troops that they would get to know one another pretty well over the next few months.
"I'm in trouble," the specialist remembered thinking. He feared comrades would find out he is gay. Worse, he said, they could figure out that he has been dating another soldier in the combat arms battalion for more than five years. Their careers were on the line.
The reaction during the soldier's year-long deployment -- nobody asked about it -- offers new insight into how today's military might adapt to a repeal of the ban on openly gay service members sought by President Obama and top Pentagon officials. The specialist didn't exactly tell, but at the end of the tour, his sexual orientation had become a poorly kept secret -- and his career was undamaged.
"I don't know if I won any hearts and minds among the Iraqis," said the specialist, who returned home from Iraq recently. "But I did among my brothers in arms because I did my job well and went above and beyond. I was respected."
A younger and more liberal corps of commanders and soldiers has given rise to bubbles of tolerance in today's military, an institution that soldiers describe as still largely unwelcoming and wary of gays, according to interviews with more than a dozen enlisted troops and officers, both gay and straight.
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