“Clinton = Homo Foe!” – “SILENCE = DEATH” – “No Ask! No Tell! Bill Clinton Go To Hell!”, demonstrators protest President Bill Clinton’s announcement of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy, Times Square, New York City, July 21, 1993. Photographer unknown. During his campaign for the presidency, then-Governor Bill Clinton promised that he would overturn the U.S. military’s policy precluding homosexuals from openly serving; as president, however, Clinton’s new policy faced open revolt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Senate Republicans. Thus, on July 19, 1993, twenty-three years ago today, Clinton announced a “compromise” policy, which he called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue,” the “essential elements” of which were: (1) service members were to be judged on their conduct, not their sexual orientation; (2) enlistment procedures were not to include questions about sexual orientation; (3) “an open statement by a service member that he or she is a homosexual will create a rebuttable presumption that he or she intends to engage in prohibited conduct, but the service member will be given an opportunity to refute that presumption; in other words, to demonstrate that he or she intends to live by the rules of conduct that apply in the military service”; and (4) military codes of conduct were to be applied evenhandedly to heterosexuals and homosexuals. While the “compromise” quieted Clinton’s military critics and his conservative opponents (on this issue), it infuriated the LGBT community; moreover, the policy did not work: for the eighteen years the policy existed, officers continued to ask, the slightest hint of homosexuality could result in a full investigation, and service members continued to be discharged based on little more than innuendo. By the time the policy officially was repealed on September 20, 2011, 14,346 soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women were discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (Source: @jimburroway). #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #queerhistorymatters #haveprideinhistory #dontaskdonttell (at Times Square, New York City)
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