Troops Liking Gays More Than Usual

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theslowlane/848034996/">theslowlane</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When Admiral Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, blew everybody’s mind this month by advocating an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it was easy to be skeptical. Perhaps you suspected, like John McCain and Ted Nugent, that Mullen wasn’t speaking for the military’s rank-and-file members. After all, the all-volunteer force isn’t widely recognized as a progressive institution.

That may be changing, though. On Wednesday, Military Times released results of a services-wide poll that showed officers and enlisteds across all four branches are more accepting of gays in their ranks, and less comfortable than ever with DADT. That gels with today’s anecdotal story that no subordinates are calling Mullen out on DADT in his occasional Q-and-A sessions with them.

The poll requires some qualification: slightly more than half of the 3,000 respondents still said they oppose repealing the current law. Nevertheless, support for full gay equality is higher than in Military Times‘ previous polls. Maybe it’s because so many of the service members they spoke to admitted being gay: by the paper’s figures, there are three times as many lesbians in the military as there are in society at large.

Don’t be too surprised: Any institution that employed the likes of Woody Guthrie, Howard Zinn, Johnny Cash, and Hunter S. Thompson can’t be entirely retrograde. As one airman told the AP today: “The U.S. military was always at the forefront of social change. We didn’t wait for laws to change.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate