by Rex Wockner
President-elect Barack Obama may not move quickly to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on being openly gay in the military, according to published reports.
A Nov. 24 report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said: "Very quietly, the Obama team has let it be known that the new administration will not immediately reassess the U.S. military's policy of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' … Raising the topic of gays in the military was considered by many to be the second of two out-of-the-box decisions that ended badly for a newly elected President Bill Clinton (in 1993)."
The National Journal and The Washington Times said Obama might wait until 2010 to tackle the ban.
However, the gay newspaper Washington Blade reported Nov. 25 that an unnamed Obama spokesperson said the mainstream-media reports were premature.
"An Obama transition team spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the decision on how to approach repealing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' … would be made after more experts have joined the Obama administration," the paper said.
"These decisions will not be made before the full national security team is in place," the Blade quoted the spokesperson as saying.
A July poll by The Washington Post and ABC News found that 75 percent of Americans said "yes" when asked, "Do you think that homosexuals who do publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?"
The poll found that even Republicans (64 percent) and white evangelical Christians (57 percent) supported scrapping the ban.
The random survey of 1,119 American adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
