During an LGBT forum on Wednesday, Army
Secretary Eric Fanning expressed skepticism that President-elect
Donald Trump would reinstate Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
In 2010, Congress repealed the military
policy which prohibited gay, lesbian and bisexual troops from serving
openly.
“It is very hard to roll back these
things,” said
Fanning, the first openly gay Army secretary.
Fanning said that reversal would be
difficult because, among other things, “society is changing so
quickly.”
“It really is,” he told Steve
Clemons, moderator of the Atlantic's “Unfinished Business”
summit. “And we're accessing young soldiers who just come from a
different world, and they really don't understand why we're
discussing some of these [things] or how we're discussing some of
these things.”
“It is easier, as difficult as it can
be, to implement [regulations] than to roll them back, often times,”
Fanning said. “It is one thing to have a debate about whether
somebody should be able to put on a uniform. It's an entirely
different thing to say to someone who has a uniform on, you've got to
take it off. And that is a very different conversation for senior
uniformed leadership.”
The Pentagon earlier this year lifted
its ban on transgender troops serving openly. That decision has yet
to be fully implemented and is seen as more vulnerable to being
undone by the next administration.
Trump has at least suggested that he's
opposed to LGBT inclusion in the military. When asked in October by
a veteran what he would do “about the social engineering and
political correctness that's been imposed” on the military, giving
transgender service as an example, Trump answered: “We're going to
get away from political correctness.”
Fanning steps down from his post on
January 19.