Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Trapped out of the closet

Over the weekend I heard about two cases of closeted gays in the military being outed by others. It seems to me that if the servicemember isn’t telling, authorities should ignore the allegation. This narrow, more restrictive approach might be a good interim step before lifting “don’t ask, don’t tell”-my guess is that will happen ...

585579_090526_trapped2.jpg
585579_090526_trapped2.jpg

Over the weekend I heard about two cases of closeted gays in the military being outed by others. It seems to me that if the servicemember isn't telling, authorities should ignore the allegation. This narrow, more restrictive approach might be a good interim step before lifting "don't ask, don't tell"-my guess is that will happen around December 2010.

Over the weekend I heard about two cases of closeted gays in the military being outed by others. It seems to me that if the servicemember isn’t telling, authorities should ignore the allegation. This narrow, more restrictive approach might be a good interim step before lifting “don’t ask, don’t tell”-my guess is that will happen around December 2010.

In one case, Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, an F-15 pilot with 18 years in the military, was outed last year by someone just before a deployment to Iraq, and then was grounded, so decided to come out.  “I followed the rules for 18 years,” he said, according to good old Stars & Stripes. “I didn’t make the decision to come out. There’s no reason I couldn’t continue to do my job well.”

Flickr user Brymo

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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