DADT should be repealed in favor of allowing gay service members to serve openly.

Alright, I will be covering each contention in turn. Contention 1: My opponent does not argue that we are or are not silencing a minority thus I will restate that we are. Furthermore I go on to state that this is of no benefit to our military. In fact I have empirical examples from 13 other countries that lifted their version of the gay ban. "The GAO researchers noted that 13 Western allied countries allow homosexual men and women to serve in the military without restrictions and officials from the domestic departments that had prohibited discrimination of sexual minorities reported, ‘they had not experienced any degradation of mission associated with these policies'" (Evans). "Before Canada lifted its gay ban in 1992, a survey of 6,500 male soldiers found that 62% said they would refuse to share showers or living quarters with a gay soldier. But when the ban was actually lifted, follow-up studies found no increased difficulty with recruiting, discipline or performance, and few if any resignations were attributed to the change in policy. A similar scenario unfolded in Britain, where two-thirds of service members indicated that they would not serve with gays if the British ban were eliminated. Following the lifting of the ban, studies found no increased difficulty with recruitment" (Frank) "Australia, Israel, and Canada also eliminated bans without experiencing any increase in antigay violence" (Belkin) It should be noted that these countries are some of our closet allies, not to mention that we currently serve beside their openly homosexual service members in Iraq, with no problems. Contention 2: No, it is quite clearly pushing the mindset that being gay is a bad thing. In fact, I have another piece of evidence for you. "'In the military,' said the Army JAG officer who deployed to OEF while serving in the Navy, ‘we learn to follow rules, and we promote what we're told to promote.' She said the result was that laws and policies sent clear messages about what was and was not acceptable in the service. ‘The best thing you can do as a soldier or sailor is to stand up for what the military says is right.' If the military said that gays and lesbians were welcome, it would have an enormous impact on attitudes toward them in the service. But ‘when the military is giving the message that there's something wrong and shameful about being gay, then we're also giving the message that to hate gays is acceptable'" (Frank) Understand my point? Contention 3: "It also does not impose a religious anti-gay view on anyone in the military, as it only asks of a person to keep quiet." >>Yes it does. Any heterosexual service member can quite clearly state that they are heterosexual but the moment a gay service member states that they are homosexual they are ejected from the military. Considering the fact that many many other countries have all lifted their gays bans with no harm this is quite simply an outdated religious ideal. Contention 4: My opponent states, "The assumption than in your unit, there are gays among you but you don't know who, should not be made in the first place. There may not even be any gay people in your unit. And the fact that there may be gays among you should not affect your morale." First off whether the assumption should be made or not is irrelevant as the assumption can be made. Secondly this hurts unit cohesion in morale status quo not because service members dislike gays but rather because gay service members cannot be entirely open with their fellow service members, they are always hiding something. Third point, my opponent says that the fact that there are gays among you should not hurt your morale, this is true, and it doesn't, thus there is NO REASON to keep this ban. Contention 5: Let me restate my points in a fluid order. a. People currently do not serve in the military because they are opposed to the militaries current anti-gay policy. Not all these people are gay. I for instance do not like the militaries anti-gay policy, and while I am not gay I do not feel serving a force with such a moral code is in alignment with my morals. Thus the lifting of this ban would allow for myself and other people who disdain the policy to better join the military. b. Unit Cohesion and Morale would increase because the gay service members that everyone knows are already there would be able to openly admit to their friends that they were gay. This would stop everyone from wondering who is gay and would allow the gay service members to better bond with their peers because they would no longer be guarding secrets from them. c. Gays are no lesser at their job, thus there is no reason to discriminate against them by forcing them to keep their sexuality a secret. d. The current policy wastes money. In the status quo we hire service members, spend money to train those service members, spend money to outfit them, spend money to transport them, spend money to feed them. And then, if those service members are discovered to be gay we must then eject them, at which point we lose all the money we just spent and must spend all that money over again to rerecruit, retrain, refeed, and reequip a soldier to fight in the gay soldiers place. "According to the Pentagon, it has discharged more than 10,000 service members for being gay, including nearly 800 with skills deemed ‘mission critical' by the Department of Defense" (Ralls).