Eye-opening doc about the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that clearly and without sensationalism shows how the ruling has had an extremely negative impact on lives of gays and lesbians who wish to serve their country through military service. Fairly decent personal profiles – including one of a new recruit whose face is obscured as his embarks on tour of duty of Iraq while forced to hide his sexuality and comes to the conclusion that when in combat, all he’s thinking about is being a soldier – mixed with some surprising stats (military lowering standards, recruiting known felons and academically inadequate troops, while estimated 65,000 homosexuals still ‘in hiding’ in service) add to the sense of injustice and hypocrisy in the policy. Historical background – including comparisons of Truman’s 1948 President ruling putting Blacks into the military overnight with Clinton’s fudged 1993 ruling, and the similarities in the language used re: blacks/gays ‘disrupting’ white/hetero units in combat – adds consistent weight to the argument to repeal the policy, which by the end seemed pretty irrefutable. Doc shows burgeoning youth movement and increasingly outspoken retired top-ranking officials will hold the key to changing the policy, and almost has an elegiac feel amid the quiet provocation, as if documenting the last days of this bizarre and unworkable compromised discrimination.
