When I was in the Air Force, one of the guys in my barracks was gay.
I knew Richard was gay because he liked to wear a little bit of eyeliner when he wasn't on duty.
I also knew he was gay because every time he got a few beers in him at the Airman's Club, he'd flirt with me.
I handled this great threatening menace to my manhood by telling him to go away. Which he always did.
That was quite some time ago — 1970. Those were different times for gay men and women, but not so much as you might imagine.
Richard and I were medics, assigned to a hospital in Mississippi. With the Vietnam War going on, business in military hospitals was, unfortunately, very good.
Richard was a great medic, far better than I was. And people in military hospitals always like working with someone who is good at what he does. It's especially the case when you're short-handed, which we always were.
With Richard's many mannerisms, his sexual preference was no secret to anyone, including the officers. It wasn't a matter of "Don't ask, don't tell." It was more a matter of "We have work to do."
We accepted Richard because there wasn't time to do anything else. That's the way it seems to work best for the military.
Consider, for example, the end of segregated troops in the armed forces during the Korean War.
You can look it up. The need for troops in Korea exceeded the means to house the black soldiers separately from the white soldiers. Thus we got integrated armed forces, out of necessity.
So, back to gays in the military. We're at a time in our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan where we can no longer exclude qualified volunteers just because they're openly gay.
President Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy was, and is, political cowardice. It hasn't worked — thousands of gay soldiers have been dismissed from the military since the policy's adoption in 1993.
Retired Gen. John Shalikashvili was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Clinton came up with the policy. He opposed it, because he opposed gays in the military, period.
Now, Shalikashvili says he was wrong. He says he has met with gay servicemen and drawn some new conclusions.
"These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers," he wrote.
Well, maybe the military has changed, but the people in it haven't. We were capable of accepting gays within our ranks decades ago.
That's exactly the situation today, as today's soldiers overwhelmingly say it's a non-issue to them.
If I need the help of the medic or marksman working next to me, his sexual orientation won't be high on my list of priorities.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Tuesday that he will begin looking for ways to eliminate the policy and begin integrating gay and straight soldiers.
It's about time.
Today's all-volunteer military in this time of war needs all the good people it can get — including those good people who happen to be gay.
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