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 Poll: Majority Of Troops Would Welcome Gay Soldiers
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: December 19, 2006 - 2:30 pm ET
(Santa Barbara, California) Three-out-of-four
members of the military who are serving in Iraq or recently returned home say
they don't care if someone in their unit is gay according to a poll released
Tuesday by Zogby International.
They also said that if the military allowed gays
to server openly it would have had no effect on their decision to enlist.
Zogby polled 545 troops between Oct. 24 and 26
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The survey was designed in conjunction with
the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It
has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
The poll also found that nearly one in four U.S.
troops say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and
of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly
from the individual.
More than half of the troops who know a gay peer
said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others
despite the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that bars gays from acknowledging
publicly that they are gay.
Of those who said they do not know or suspect
anyone in their unit of being gay nearly half said they would not care if they
discovered a fellow trooper were homosexual.
"Today’s poll is one more nail in the
coffin of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'" said C. Dixon Osburn, executive
director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
"Those who defend the law have argued that
openly gay personnel harm military readiness. This research highlights the
absurdity of such a hypothesis. Not only are there more than 65,000
lesbians and gays serving in the armed forces, but many are serving
openly. Their straight colleagues are just fine with that At a time
when our fighting forces are stretched thin and leaders are calling for the
recruitment of more troops, it is time for Congress to do away with this archaic
law."
Since the ban on gays serving openly was
implemented a decade ago more than 11,000 men and women have been dismissed
under "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" according to the Government
Accountability Office.
The number of gays and lesbians who have
attempted to enlist and rejected because they said they were gay is not known.
A study conducted last year for the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network concluded that the U.S. military could
attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays and lesbians in the military were
able to be open about their sexual orientation.
Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA) will re-introduce
The Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal “Don’t Ask,
Don’t Tell” and allow gays to serve openly, when Congress reconvenes in
2007.
The bill died at the end of the last Congress
after the Republican leadership tied it up in committee.
"These new data prove that thousands of gay
and lesbian servicemembers are already deployed overseas and are integrated,
important members of their units. It is long past time to strike down
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and create a new policy that allows gays and
lesbians to serve openly," Meehan said on Tuesday.
The Zogby poll is the latest in a series of polls
and public statements indicating readiness for a chance in policy. A 2004
Annenberg poll found that a majority of junior enlisted personnel favor allowing
gays to serve openly, up from 13% in other polls from 1993.
Among the general public, Gallup has found 79
percent support for repealing the gay ban. A recent Boston Globe poll also
found that a majority of conservatives and regular church-goers favor repeal.
©365Gay.com 2006
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