[LINK] "Pentagon consults with Canadian queers on repealing DADT"

[rfmcdonald]

This Xtra! article caught my attention.

Canadian lawyer Doug Elliott was suggested to Pentagon officials by an American law professor familiar with his work on queer cases in Canada.

"It came out of the blue for me," Elliott says. "I was aware that President Obama had suggested that they should be looking at repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but I really wasn't watching the process all that closely.

After a 30-minute phone call with several of the team members from the Pentagon, Elliott mentioned that he would be travelling to Washington DC at the end of the month with Egale Canada's Helen Kennedy to attend a fundraiser for the Williams Institute at the Canadian Embassy, and that the pair could meet the Pentagon's team in person while in town. The officials agreed.

Elliott and Kennedy arrived at the Pentagon on May 26.

"We were kind of the odd couple in the Pentagon, I think, but we were very graciously received by the team," Elliott says. "They had representatives from all of the services at the Pentagon, except for the Coast Guard. There was someone from the Marines, the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy including two full colonels, so they were taking it pretty seriously."

Apparently Canadians, representatives of the military and otherwise, have been talking to the American military about the problems of DADT and the non-problems with out soldiers.

When asked what discussions the Canadian Forces have had with the Pentagon on this issue, a spokesperson at National Defence headquarters emailed the following:

"Please note that on May 19, 2010, the CF have sent a delegation to Washington, DC to participate in the Brookings Palm Institute panel discussion on the subject of the DADT policy in the American military. Canada maintains bi-lateral discussions with the US on a number of issues. As it would be inappropriate for the Canadian Forces to comment on the policies of other militaries, we are unable to comment further."

While the issues around chaplains in the US armed forces appears to be more contentious than it was in the Canadian Forces, the biggest message that Elliott says of the Canadian experience is that things happened with relative ease.

"The whole parade of horrors that was trotted out in Canada before the ban ended — about the terrible things that were going to happen in showers and on submarines and things like that — none of that materialized," Elliott says. "All of this stuff about the problems it would cause on the battlefield just didn't come up."

American readers in particular, your thoughts?