What was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and why did it face a lot of backlash from the LGBTQ+ community?
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Lots of people have nailed most of what DADT was, but missed the the political part.
This was at a point in time where the religious right was taking hold of the Republican party, but there were still pockets of resistance to it.
Barry Goldwater; noted conservative, former Senator, and ’64 Republican POTUS nominee, famously wrote a letter to the New York Times in ’93 comparing gays in the military to racial segregation in the military, and it was only a matter of time before it ends, and it should end now along with “You don’t have to be straight, to shoot straight”
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/11/us/goldwater-backs-gay-troops.html
The problem is newly elected President Clinton was from a “new” wing of Democratic party called the Democratic Leadership Conference, and espoused the ideas of the Third Way.
In practice, that meant running away from the ideas of the New Left Democratic party, and focusing on middle-class whites, free-market capitalism, eliminating government intervention, “mainstream” values, balanced budgets, tough on crime policy, and triangulation.
Now, if you’re saying to yourself “that sounds quite a bit like the Republican party pre-religious right” you would be correct. And that’s where triangulation comes in to basically speed run the process.
>In politics, triangulation is a strategy associated with U.S. president Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The politician presents a position as being above or between the left and right sides (or “wings”) of a democratic political spectrum. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one’s political opponent. The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue.
Clinton and the Democrats basically start staking a 80’s compassionate conservative position, and the loud religious right start staking their bigoted religious based positions. DADT was basically taking the most sane right-wing Republican idea, and shining it up because it was “better than before”, and attaching it to the Democrats.
The other issue is that it marginalized whatever Republicans were left that recognized it as an issue of equality and bigotry and legitimized many who were against gays in the military altogether.
You can draw a line between this and some other Clinton bills/initiatives for not only fracturing the current Democratic party, but creating the environment for the continued radicalization of the Republican party.
If you see DADT as the Democratic party legitimizing bigotry of homosexuals in the military, that’s something that is going to receive backlash.
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