"Coming out" is just like declaring that you're a Nazi, a member of the Ku Klux Klan--or a rapist.
At least, that's what the late General Carl E. Mundy believed. In 1993, not long after Bill Clinton was elected to his first term, the General--who was then Commandant of the Marine Corps--and the President met with Vice President Al Gore and other White House officials to discuss the issue of gays in the military.
Not long after that meeting, the Clinton administration would implement "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a policy that, it seemed, made no one happy. (Some might say that's the definition of a compromise.) To be fair, it might have been the best anyone could do. After all, Mundy was not alone among the military's top brass in his opposition to letting gays serve, and the military probably could not continue its old policy of banning gays outright.
DADT was finally repealed in 2010.
This note from the 1993 meeting was among 10,000 pages of notes released yesterday by the William J. Clinton Presidential library:
At least, that's what the late General Carl E. Mundy believed. In 1993, not long after Bill Clinton was elected to his first term, the General--who was then Commandant of the Marine Corps--and the President met with Vice President Al Gore and other White House officials to discuss the issue of gays in the military.
Not long after that meeting, the Clinton administration would implement "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a policy that, it seemed, made no one happy. (Some might say that's the definition of a compromise.) To be fair, it might have been the best anyone could do. After all, Mundy was not alone among the military's top brass in his opposition to letting gays serve, and the military probably could not continue its old policy of banning gays outright.
DADT was finally repealed in 2010.
This note from the 1993 meeting was among 10,000 pages of notes released yesterday by the William J. Clinton Presidential library:
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