Fighting Gays More Important than Fighting Terrorism

The United States Army has fired Lieutenant Dan Choi for being openly gay despite its desperate need for his expertise. Choi is fluent in Arabic and something of an expert on the Middle East. As such, he possesses knowledge vital to the war against terrorism. Still, he is being dismissed for publicly revealing his homosexuality. Apparently, keeping the army a gay-free zone is more important than fighting al-Qaeda. An odd priority.

Eugene Volokh has more.

Update: Rush Holt:

Choi is an Arabic linguist—exactly the kind of critically-skilled soldier and leader his infantry platoon needs if they deploy to a country in which Arabic is the common language. Bluntly stated, his dismissal from the military—and the dismissal of other gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) servicemembers—will put lives at risk.

Our national security is heavily dependent on translators, specialists, and interpreters within the intelligence community, the diplomatic corps, and the military. Prior to September 11, 2001 our intelligence community was at only 30 percent readiness in languages critical to national security. The government revealed after the 9/11 attacks that it had a 123,000-hour backlog of Arabic language recordings waiting to be analyzed. The last thing we should be doing is telling Arabic linguists in the military that they are not needed.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has a video clip.