BY MAYA RUPERT

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

An ever-growing chorus of voices has formed, urging President Barack Obama to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and I’m joining that chorus today.

The position that unit morale and cohesion will suffer if we allow openly gay soldiers to serve in the military is wrong for many reasons, but the one that strikes me most is a moral one. It is an acknowledgment that while gay and lesbian men and women make a valuable contribution to the armed forces, we are willing to ignore that contribution in favor of intolerance. That position is beneath us. 

President Abraham Lincoln was once asked his opinion on a proposed state constitutional amendment that would lengthen the waiting period for naturalized citizens to be allowed to vote and hold public office. In response, Lincoln gave the best non-comeback comeback I’ve ever heard. In a letter, he said, “Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.”

I’ve always loved him for saying that because it works on two levels. His likely meaning was that he’s opposed to whatever tends to degrade the people. But I’ve always thought there was another way to read that. That maybe with a wink, a nod, and a dangling modifier, Lincoln was subtly encouraging us to jealously protect the institutions of our country from degradation.

Because, really, shouldn’t we expect our institutions to be more perfect than we are? There are moments when we are far lesser than we’re capable of being, but we can never etch into the fabric of our institutions anything that goes so fundamentally against the aim of their spirit to make us better. 

We expect our justice system to retain a sense of neutrality we would never impose upon ourselves and our political process to maintain stability when we’re at our most raucous.

And we should expect no less from our military than a recognition that, while public opinion may be slow to change, the institution charged with protecting and defending our national values must embrace perhaps the most fundamental of those values: that we are all created equal and are entitled to freedom to carve our own paths in this world. And those who give themselves to service and walk a path not of their own choosing, so that others may enjoy that freedom, should at least be extended that most natural right to be all and exactly who they are. 

This month marks the 61st anniversary of the integration of the military. It wasn’t that long ago that the unit was convinced it could not survive if blacks were allowed to serve alongside whites; that integration would be so disruptive to unit cohesion and morale that it would bring the military to its knees.

And now a black man is the commander in chief of that military.

Racism had not disappeared before we integrated the armed forces. But President Harry Truman believed those units could be better than the people they were bound to protect. He believed in the idea of America even when Americans hadn’t gotten there yet.

I believe in America. I believe that we are better than Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Our military certainly is, and it’s proven that more than once. And it’s an insult to them; an insult to the Tuskegee Airmen who lived long enough to see a black man command the entire military; an insult to the women who longed to serve their country in a time when they couldn’t, to believe that this military isn’t capable of doing what it’s done before: accepting into its band of brothers and sisters one more group who is willing to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with them in the most dangerous military time of a generation.

Much will no doubt be made of this year’s anniversary of military integration because of the symbolism of Obama’s position in the military. But it is Obama’s position in history that obligates him to use his executive authority to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Who can understand better than our first black commander in chief that the value of a person’s service cannot be dwarfed by their minority identity? And if we betray that simple and fundamental idea, what is left of America to believe in?

Maya Rupert is an attorney in downtown Los Angeles. She has previously contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as other publications. Her column explores issues of race, gender and politics and appears in the L.A. Watts Times regularly. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .