Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This has been the policy of the military. It's worked very well for many years. There's been a paucity of study of this, and finally, when we approach the period in which it was going to be once again brought up in Congress, there was a study commissioned which asked questions of many, many people. However, the study was flawed from the get-go. First of all, it did not ask whether this policy should be implemented. It asked the question how should it be implemented.

I am a physician. I come from a medical background. If ever we try to determine what the effective way of treating a disease is, we would never start with the presupposition that this treatment is already the accepted treatment of that. No, in fact we go and study that. This was not done.

But let's talk about the questions a little bit in the study, the study that came out on November 30, really only a few days ago. The question is actually asked in the survey, it asks active duty members to actually divine what they thought was going to happen as a result of this policy. That's an impossibility.

It also sets the stage for social experimentation, a time in which we're at war, when we have all of the logistical problems that go on, and yet here we are dropping in the middle of it this bomb of social experimentation.

Even in times of peace, when we have a major deployment, we actually have a mortality rate. People die even when we have peaceful exercises. But in a day when you're actually at war, just think of the additional headaches of all of the logistical problems that go along with implementing such a policy.

Then there's a question of constitutionality. Gee, how can we do something with the military that we don't do with people at large?

And the Supreme Court has spoken out on this, and they've said that the military is a unique organization.

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Mr. FLEMING. The military is indeed a unique organization, and that such restrictions, such policies can indeed go forward.

I would just like to say, in wrapping up, a couple of important statistics that I think should be mentioned, and that is that 60 to 67 percent of Army and Marine combat members said that this would be a major disruption if this were implemented.

Seventeen percent of the spouses said they would urge their active duty member to get out. And that certainly negates the argument that somehow we would not lose too many soldiers in this.

So I urge my colleagues today to vote against this.

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