Courage Under Fire

Posted by Joel Friedlander | No Comments

Today in America we are faced with a major issue of equal rights regarding Gay people serving in the military.  It may be beneficial to look at how Harry Truman handled a very similar situation in 1948; the integration of the military.

In early 1948, Truman “… proposed a ten-point program, which included provisions for an anti-lynching law, an anti-poll tax law, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, a Commission on Civil Rights, home rule for the District of Columbia and desegregation of the armed services. … nothing was passed by the Congress.” The Truman Legacy, http://www.majorcox.com/columns/truman.htm.

Later in the year, at the Democratic National Convention, then Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, pushed through a civil rights platform even more wide ranging than Truman’s proposals.  Many of the southern Democratic delegates, the Dixicrats, as they were called, walked out of the convention.  They nominated Strom Thurmond as their candidate for President.

With his reelection in sight, and with 1948 Gallop Polls showing that 82% of Americans were against his plan for integration of the military, Harry Truman issued Executive Order No. 9981 on July 26. The order stated, in part, that “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” The order also established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services (Fahy Committee). http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/desegblurb.htm

In the general election that Fall the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, was considered a shoein to win the election, but Harry Truman won reelection.

Today, our current president faces mid term elections in which he is not running for reelection.  He is faced with the loss of Congressional seats and so he has proposed that there should be equality of treatment for Gay People serving in the military and that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law,” be repealed.  To do this he has decided to have a commission appointed to do a study.

Do we really need a study of things that the entire country, the military, and the Congress, knows about, just to delay action on the problem?

If the Congress needs to know about Gays who have served in the military, call in regular soldiers who have served in combat with them.  They are the ones that know who belongs in the military and who doesn’t.

A soldier who serves with other soldiers soon learns about them.  I think that the concept is best expressed from a very old movie, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” It deals with soldiers coming home from WWII in 1946, two years before Truman’s Executive Order.

One of the characters in the film, played by Frederic March, who won Best Actor that year, is a loan officer at a bank and is explaining to the bank president why he made a loan to someone who had no collateral:
“Al Stephenson: You see, Mr. Milton, in the Army I’ve had to be with men when they were stripped of everything in the way of property except what they carried around with them and inside them. I saw them being tested. Now some of them stood up to it and some didn’t. But you got so you could tell which ones you could count on. I tell you this man Novak is okay. His ‘collateral’ is in his hands, in his heart and his guts. It’s in his right as a citizen.”
People who are gay have the same guts to fight for their country that every other soldier in this country has.  They have fought honorably and courageously in every war America has ever been involved in.  They have a right to serve in the military openly and freely.  It is their right as citizens.

If President Obama has the same courage that Harry Truman had in 1948, he will issue an Executive Order superceding any actions the Congress might have taken two decades age, in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  It is patently obvious that that misguided law doesn’t work for the benefit of either Gay people, or the military they serve in.  It is hindering America in its fight against Lunatic Muslim Terrorists, and it is just plain wrong.

Does he have that kind of courage?  I wonder?

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