Eager to capitalize on the recent momentum for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and weary of the military’s ability to derail the process with a year-long review, a national organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans has proposed a plan that would lock in a date for full Congressional repeal and give the military 18 months to “do its studies, work through its issues, and plan for successful implementation.” “After the hearing, I think there’s been an expectation that we would have a study process in 2010 and a legislative process in 2011,” said Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United told the Advocate. “But a lot of us in the military community feel like that’s a grave political mistake and we’re potentially risking the entire issue by proceeding that way.”

The group’s Set End-date / Delayed Implementation (SEDI) model would proceed in the following way:

- Immediately: Pentagon Working Group begins work; Legislation introduced to lock in repeal

- After 3 months: Deadline for interim changes to policy enforcement; First report to Congress

- After 6 months: Second report to Congress on progress of repeal implementation planning

- After 9 months: Third report to Congress on progress of repeal implementation panning

- After 12 months: [Repeal passed]; Repeal implementation begins according to plan established by Pentagon

- After 18 months: Full repeal completed; Final report to Congress

The model places Congress and the Pentagon on two separate tracks: the former repeals the policy, the latter studies “how we best prepare for it.” There is no endless delay or year-long review to tell us what numerous studies and real world experiences in other countries have unanimously concluded: on the whole, straight soldiers don’t really care about the sexual orientation of their colleagues. As one headline in Foreign Policy magazine put it about gays in the Israeli military: ‘They’re Here, They’re Queer, It’s No Big Deal.’

The ‘big deal’ is the threat of a manufactured controversy that could arise from a drawn out process. “Even if all parties involved have the best of intentions, the DADT issue does not exist in a vacuum. Many other forces can intervene between now and the future point at which the Pentagon finishes its planning and study that can derail the intended trajectory, including a year’s worth of time for reactionary opposition to organize and wage a serious campaign, the midterm elections, and the outcomes of other volatile political issues,” the report notes.

After all, if the health debate taught Democrats anything, it’s this: “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.”

During an interview with Fox News, Defense Secretary Robert Gates implied that he would slow walk the military’s review of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). “I think this has to be done very carefully and very deliberately,” he said. “The military culture is a very strong one… These people do not have choices about who they associate with“:

GATES: The review I am launching is to help inform the legislative process of some facts about the attitudes of our men and women in uniform, what they think about a change in the law, what their families think…The truth is we don’t have any facts. There are a lot of articles, a lot of assertions made. But we need to understand all of the different things that have to be with in terms of housing and benefits and regulations and fraternization rules and conduct and training.

Watch it:

While studying possible changes to “benefits and regulations and fraternization” would help commanders implement a new non-discrimination policy once DADT is repealed, it’s not clear why the right of a minority to serve openly should be put to a vote before the majority — particularly when doing so recalls some rather uncomfortable historical parallels. After all, when President Harry Truman desegregated the military, a 1949 survey of white Army personnel revealed that “32% completely opposed racial integration in any form, and 61% opposed integration if it meant that Whites and Blacks would share sleeping quarters and mess halls.” Attitudes about both blacks and gays have certainly changed since 1948, but that doesn’t mean that keeping blacks and whites segregated or forcing gay and lesbian service members to lie about their sexuality is any more wrong.

Increased tolerance does, however, disproves Gates’ implication that a quick policy reversal would lead gay members to come out in a way that would lead large numbers of straight solders to “just up and walk off the job.” An article in today’s Washington Post observes that straight soldiers are already serving comfortably alongside gay and lesbian recruits. “A younger and more liberal corps of commanders and soldiers has given rise to bubbles of tolerance in today’s military.” “In recent years, service members and researchers say, a growing number of gay troops have disclosed their sexual orientation to supervisors and comrades.”

“Underground gay communities” already exist “at bases across the United States and even in war zones.” And even if the current policy is repealed in the coming months, “gay soldiers are unlikely to come out of the closet in large numbers,” service members say. “An openly gay soldier would have a lot to overcome,” said Matthew Gallagher, a former Army captain and popular blogger who left the Army last year. “It is a culture fueled entirely by machismo, and it definitely has a bit of locker-room homophobia.”

Despite all of these challenges, experiences in the 25 countries that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly also suggest that a new policy must be “decided upon and implemented as quickly as possible” to avoid anxiety and uncertainty in the field. Surveying military members may certainly prove useful, but using the survey to delay repealing DADT is just bad policy.