Source: 365Gay.com
Author(s): 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Date: December 27, 2006

(Washington) Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) said Wednesday he will reintroduce legislation to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." early next year.

Meehan said that 112 Members of Congress from both parties have signed on to co-sponsor the bill, called the Military Readiness Enhancement Act.

"I will also be asking for the first Congressional hearings on gays in the military since 1993.  I know that when my colleagues see and understand the evidence against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," they will be motivated to join me in the fight for repeal," Meehan said in a statement released by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

"We cannot afford to keep losing the talent and contribution of patriotic, gay Americans who want to serve.  Our military success depends on having the best and brightest Americans in our armed forces.  The best and brightest includes lesbian and gay Americans, too."

Earlier this month a Zogby International poll showed that 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.
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 point.

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.

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.