The nation faces another cultural hurdle, reminiscent of other controversial social changes erupting into ugly debate and name-calling.
Now Congress is about to repeal the military "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule allowing gays to serve so long as they conceal their sexual druthers. If outed, gays are ingloriously discharged.
It's useful to leaf back through U.S. history for a look at other landmark controversies.
Slavery—that broke the nation apart and led to the Civil War. Today, black Americans permeate society's every profession and occupation—a black president, a black Supreme Court justice, black members of Congress and the Senate, hundreds of mayors and city councilmen, state legislators, governors, admirals and generals, ambassadors, corporate CEOs.
Then suffrage. Women were waived off as intellectually inferior. But voting rights for women came in 1920. Now a woman is speaker of the House. Women are generals and admirals, senators and representatives, elected city, county and state officials, and major players in medicine, education, law, economics and industry. Women today are flying combat aircraft on missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and captaining the world's largest airliners.
After these donnybrooks, Americans by sizeable majorities lamented, "What was the big deal" about the controversy?
The same is bound to be said once the 17-year ban on gays in uniform is abolished. The United States is alone among major Western powers in prohibiting homosexuals in the military.
Banning gays has no logic. It was trumped up by religious zealots and seized by right-wing politicians, virtually all of whom have never served in the military. Polls by CNN, Gallup and The Washington Post in recent months show the public supports gays in the military by overwhelming margins as high as 78 percent.
Through 2009, more than 13,000 gay service personnel have been tossed out because they were outed. One study said this has cost the Pentagon $363 million in lost services, recruiting and training.
Among the absurd results of the policy is that of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenback, a decorated, 18-year Air Force F-15 Eagle pilot with 88 combat missions who's being discharged because he's gay—although none of his squadron mates knew he was and therefore had no complaints that he was disruptive of "unit good order and morale," the standard that critics of gays claim would be shattered by the presence of homosexuals.
Presumably, the moralizing homophobes in Congress will feel safer and more secure with Col. Fehrenbach pushed out of uniform, while the Air Force spends more millions to train a replacement.
