Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

LezGetReal.com has something up on the Pentagon pushing back on the LGBT community's outcry over the ridiculous survey the Pentagon has mailed to 400,000 members of the military. 

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said about the stories that have resulted from the leak of the 103-question survey that many “have been inflammatory in the worst case, and misleading in the best.”  The survey was suppose to remain confidential, but the distribution of the survey to the 400,000 active duty and reserve military personnel ended up without that being achieved.

Morrell stated that “Outside influence is not helpful to the process.”  Of course, given that several groups outside the process have already tried to influence the process by pushing the statements of retired chaplains out in order to try and stop the repeal, and that there was no punishment for a general who decided to issue an op-ed trying to preserve the policy, it is hard to believe that the outside influence was not going to occur anyway.

“We thought it would be breaking the faith with them for us to be proactively sharing the survey because what we are trying to do is preserve the credibility and integrity of the answers that it elicits from the force.”

“The survey is designed to get the attitudes of the force on how to proceed if Congress repeals the so-called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law, and is not a referendum on whether or not the law should be repealed.  The answers will inform the working group’s deliberations,” Morrell stated.  The LGBT Community has been very leery of the commitment to repealing DADT.  Right now, repeal rests on the shoulders of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and President Barack Obama and not Congress since an interim repeal is in the Defense budget for this year.

Morrell misses much of the reason behind the uproar when he states “Pentagon officials worked with a professional and reputable polling firm to produce the survey.  Roughly the first third of the 103 questions seeks demographic information.  The second third asks about professional and military experience.  The third asks how the law’s repeal might affect the individual being surveyed.”  Part of the problem is the wording.  The more clinical word “homosexual” tends to elicit a more negative reaction than “lesbian or gay” does.

Confidential? No outside influence? No torture took place?  Ooops.

Let us remember that no such survey took place when the armed forced were integrated or when women began assuming combat roles.  They figured it out without using inflammatory rhetoric to stir up bias, bigotry and fear.

The military really sucks. This is yet another farcical move in the long line of delays and pandering to homophobes who don't want the repeal. 

It is really hard to determine what is making my head spin more this morning, Pennsylvana politics or national politics.