"Don't ask, don't tell" has, apparently, cost the military a lot of money:
A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that the United States military spent about $193 million between 2004 and 2009 in connection with the Pentagon's "homosexual conduct policy."
The GAO analysis identified 3,664 service members as having been "separated" from the military due to its policy against openly homosexual members serving in the armed forces. Most of the cost associated with the lost personnel came in the form of recruiting and training replacements.
It cost the Department of Defense a little over $185 million to recruit and train replacements, according to the GAO. A further $7.7 million was spent on the administrative side of removing the 3,664 service members from duty.
Obviously, there are worlds of difference between DADT and Jim Crow, but on a conceptual level, this makes for a nice addendum to G.D.'s post at PostBourgie; even when there was a clear material benefit to ending discrimination against gays in the military, we continued to do so. As long as the public was comfortable with excluding gays from the military, then gays were excluded from the military, regardless of the harm it did to our security and finances. Which is to say, again, that if there is anything missing in arguments from pure self-interest, it's the reality and power of cultural coercion.
-- Jamelle Bouie
