Law Commons^™

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Employment Discrimination As A Means For Social Cleansing, E. Gary Spitko

Faculty Publications

In December 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010,” which provided for repeal of the policy prohibiting gay people from serving openly in the military, after consideration of a Department of Defense review on the implementation of such a repeal. This article examines the history of the exclusion of openly gay people from military service in the United States from the early twentieth century up until the time of the repeal. The author concludes from this review that the dominant purpose of the military’s exclusion of openly gay people was to …