While many opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) have argued against the military’s policy on gays in the military by comparing it to racial segregation, an Obama administration official seemed to reject that comparison during his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee today.
Jeh Johnson, a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee who serves as general counsel at the Pentagon, said: “I happen to agree with Senator McCain that matters of sexual orientation and race are fundamentally different, which is why, in this report, we didn’t push the racial integration chapter too hard.” Johnson said he thought the comparison was relevant insofar as military leaders in the 1940s predicted desegregation would have a negative impact on unit cohesion. Still, Johnson conceded a point that many gay rights activists and other DADT opponents make when arguing that the policy on gays in the military is fundamentally unjust. (DADT supporters tend to see sexual orientation as sociologically more akin to gender–the military currently forbids women from serving in combat units.)
Johnson was responding to John McCain’s reference to General Colin Powell’s rejection of the race/sexual orientation comparison in the early 90s. “Skin color is a benign non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument,” Powell wrote at the time. Though he now supports the repeal of DADT, Powell went on to testify to Congress in 1992 that it “would be prejudicial to good order and discipline to try to integrate [open] gays and lesbians into the current military structure.”
