A new website published on Monday
tracks the “enormous consequences” of lifting the military ban on
open gay service.
After a
federal judge in California struck down as unconstitutional “Don't
Ask, Don't Tell” and ordered
the military to stop implementing the policy, the Pentagon warned
that requiring it to cease all enforcement would “cause significant
disruptions to the force in the short term” and Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates said the suspension “has enormous consequences
for our troops.”
Those statements prompted the Palm
Center, a think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara
that studies the Pentagon policy that bans gay and bisexual service
members from serving openly, to establish a website to track all
reported instances of harm to unit cohesion, discipline and privacy
that arise as a result of open gay service.
“Secretary Gates' prediction of
'enormous consequences' is no incidental, throwaway line,” Aaron
Belkin, director of the Palm Center, said in announcing the website.
“The assertion that these consequences would arise has been the
justification for 'don't ask, don't tell' for 17 years. Now that the
ban has been suspended, we are searching vigilantly for such
consequences, and we will use the new website as a hub for reporting
what we find.”
The group says it will collect the data
using a Freedom of Information Act request.
The website (enormousconsequences.com)
reports zero incidents as on Monday evening, six days after the
military was ordered to stop enforcing the policy.