Don't Ask Too Fast
On gays, Obama's Joint Chiefs chair is caught between his boss and a conservative military.
By Dan Ephron | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 3, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177723Admiral Mike Mullen likes to talk to the enlisted troops. On a recent tour of Iraq and Afghanistan, he gathers them around at each stop and tells them to pose any question they want, large or small. Mullen is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the armed forces. Though he orders the troops to stand at ease and flashes the smile of an amiable uncle, grunts don't easily relax around such senior brass and no hand goes up. "I've got all day," he says and waits till someone breaks the silence. In Afghanistan, a Marine asks about a salary issue. A soldier in Iraq wants to know if his tour will be extended. The exchanges are awkward, but they serve to extricate Mullen from the cycle of PowerPoint briefings. "I come out to see where they're living," he tells NEWSWEEK. "I come out to see what we're asking them to do."
In the next year, Mullen might have to ask troops to do something many will find even more uncomfortable: welcome openly gay men and women into their ranks. Such was the promise made by President-elect Obama in the 2008 campaign—gay-rights groups will hold him to it. To many civilians, the shift might seem natural. American attitudes toward homosexuality have evolved since 1993, the year Congress mandated that gays could serve so long as they hid their sexual orientation. The law, known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, predates "Will & Grace," and for most Americans, even the Internet. A 2008 Washington Post–ABC News poll put public support for gays serving openly at 75 percent.
