Active gay and lesbian service members are being asked to take cover if a Department of Defense survey comes in the mail.
The DOD, as part of the Pentagon's review of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, mailed 400,000 surveys to active soldiers and reserves with questions about how they would react if service members were allowed to serve openly. The questionnaire seems straightforward, but the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for openly gay and lesbian service members, is concerned that the DOD can too easily pull a bait-and-switch.
Related: Petraeus will reshape war and 'don't ask, don't tell'
According to DOD officials, soldiers can choose anonymity. They must first log in using their common access card, or CAC, but can then get an "untraceable PIN number they then can use to log on from any computer." Seems confidential enough, but there's no guarantee that even "untraceable" electronic signatures can't be followed, especially by agencies with access to advanced cyber technology. Besides, the DOD has yet to promised that it won't violate soldiers' privacy or give immunity to soldiers discovered to be gay through the survey.
"At this time SLDN cannot recommend that lesbian, gay, or bisexual service members participate in any survey being administered by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon Working Group, or any third-party contractors," SLDN executive director Aubrey Sarvis said in a release. "While the surveys are apparently designed to protect the individual's privacy, there is no guarantee of privacy and DOD has not agreed to provide immunity to service members whose privacy may be inadvertently violated or who inadvertently outs himself or herself."
Readers should check out surveyrefund.org. They are requesting that taxpayers be given a refund for money spent on this survey.
The idea of a survey deciding policy is really off-base. No matter what the survey says DADT must be repealed, just as the armed services became racially integrated 60 years ago. Some things need to be done, because they are just “right”
It is interesting to me that Israel, which is so theocratic in other ways, has a complete policy of anti-discrimination against gays and lesbians in its Defense Forces. No one can be denied promotions or be given unfair treatment because of their sexual orientation.
Wouldn’t this survey in itself violate the DADT policy if it is released by the pentagon and is inquiring into a soldiers sexuality?
If you’ve seen clippings from the survey, it is extremely homophobic and plays on the usual fears.
aka “what would you do if you if you had to shower with a gay person?” and one of the replies is “Give them a talk about what we expect” or something to that degree. There are always more negative response options than positive, if any at all.