Last December, freshman Todd Belok was dismissed from GW's Navy ROTC after two of his fellow midshipmen reported that they saw him kiss a "special friend" at a fraternity party. Mr. Belok had long wanted to serve in the Navy and was described by a peer as "one of the most qualified midshipmen in the year." Nonetheless, he has now been banned from the program under the statute most commonly known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), despite GW's nondiscrimination policy.

In 1993 Congress enacted DADT, intending it to serve as a compromise between supporters and detractors of the ban that barred gay people from serving in the military. The law allows homosexuals to serve in the military, but forbids any speech or conduct that would reveal their sexual orientation. Under DADT, the military will discharge a service member for: making a statement to anyone, anytime, anywhere, that he or she is gay; having any physical contact with a person of the same sex for sexual pleasure (this includes hand holding); or marrying or attempting to marry someone of the same sex.

Many law schools determined that DADT violated their non-discrimination policies and so denied military recruiters access to their Career Development Offices. In response, Congress enacted the Solomon Amendment, which denies federal financial assistance to all schools and programs of a university if any one division does not give the military access to students that is equal to what any non-discriminating employer would receive.

Under this significant financial pressure, most law schools, including GW, now allow military recruiters on campus, even as they protest the military's explicit discrimination through written objections or disclaimers in career fair advertisements. Admittedly, the schools find themselves in an unenviable position, but it is still saddening and incredibly frustrating for LGBT students to see the military use their own school's facilities to unabashedly discriminate against them. The greatest disappointment here is that Congress, seeking leverage to strong-arm unwilling schools to accept the military's discriminatory policies, has resorted to threats of withholding federal funds that are neither related to the armed services nor come from the Defense Department's budget. Maybe instead of issuing a fiscal ultimatum to schools who want to protect their students from discrimination, Congress should stop and seriously consider the reasons those schools don't want this kind of recruitment on their campuses.

The source of these problems is, of course, DADT itself. The financial coercion will not end until Congress repeals DADT - and it has every good reason to do so. Polls show that most Americans support letting openly gay men and women serve in the military, and none of the 24 nations that allow gays and lesbians to openly serve have reported morale problems. The Obama administration has promised to move to repeal DADT as part of his plans to restore military readiness and build an army for the 21st century. Until then, the military continues to lose much-needed service members - some of whom the military has spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars training - under DADT. Since 1993, DADT has forced the discharge of more than 12,500 Americans, all willing and able to serve in the military in a time when our security forces have been stretched increasingly thin. DADT has utterly failed to justify itself morally or practically, and the fact that so many universities will only subject their students to its discrimination under financial duress is just one more red flag that signals how malignant this policy is.

The good news is that there are a number of active efforts in the D.C. area to protest DADT and help people who find themselves in a situation like Mr. Belok's. If you think DADT is impractical, immoral, or both, please let Congress and others know. When you next attend a career fair where the military is recruiting, stop by the table that Lambda will (probably) have set up to give students an opportunity to protest the discrimination. Also, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network will be holding its Freedom to Serve Rally on March 13th at noon at the U.S. Capitol, with a Lobby Day event in the morning on the same day (for more information, visit www.sldn.org). And as always, you can contact your Senator and Representative to ask them to stop allowing this discrimination and repeal DADT.