Lieberman wants to lead charge to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

But against that you have to measure what those problems really represent once you have acknowledged them: Why is there a problem? There is a problem because many people view gays with scorn or derision or fear. There is a problem because when people look at gays or lesbians, they find a lifestyle which they may abhor, cannot understand, do not want to understand, and believe they should not have to understand, and so do not.

The result is that we find ourselves put in the position of either embracing or rejecting what is a fundamental form of discrimination--a dislike of someone or something else because it does not conform to our sense of how we want to be or how we think everybody ought to be.

That is not what this country is supposed to be about. Whether it is a matter of skin color or religion, that is not who we are. And it is also not who we are with respect to matters of sexual preference.

Now, I am not going to spend a lot of time going into or discussing why someone is or is not gay . I am no expert on that. I can only suggest that the vast majority of people to whom I have talked who are gay do not view it as a matter of choice. They are born with that choice already part of their constitution. And for many, there is a lifetime of agony in trying to face up to the realities of who they are as a human being, as a person. And those agonies can drive some to suicide. They drive some to live a life of lies and running away. Others embrace it more readily and more capably.

We are supposed to be a society that does not drive people to run away from themselves or from their history or who they are. We are supposed to be a society which allows human beings to live to the fullest capacity of who they may want to be or who they are, defined by themselves, as long as they do not break the law, break the rules, intrude on other people.

Now, that is conduct, and conduct is what should matter in making judgments about what should or should not be allowed within the military . Status, the actual fact of being gay , and only being gay without attendant conduct that might offend somebody, cannot be sufficient in the United States of America to disallow somebody the choice, if they are qualified in every other regard, of serving their Nation.

Now, if we were to adopt a policy in this country that were to codify discrimination of this form, I think we would turn our backs on a number of different things, Mr. President, not the least of which is reality. Is there anyone in the Senate, or in this country, or in the Pentagon particularly, who believes that none of the 58,000 heroes listed on the wall in front of the Lincoln Memorial was gay ? I have never heard anybody, nor do I believe anybody could, make that assertion. Is there anyone who believes that there are not hundreds, perhaps even thousands of individuals who were gay who are buried beneath the white crosses at Arlington?

Is there anyone who does not believe that there are thousands of gays and lesbians in the military at this minute? Eleven thousand of them over the last few years have admitted it, voluntarily or not and they were drummed out.

We can be assured that there are surely thousands more who are scared to admit, who are forced by our policy to live a lie. They go about their business. They defend their country. They defend our freedoms. They defend the Constitution because they believe in what we, as a nation, stand for.

The question is not whether we should have gays in the military , because we have gays in the military . Gays have fought in the Revolution, in the Civil War, in both World Wars, in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, and they fought, Mr. President, and they died not as gays or lesbians, but as Americans.

So the question is whether we as a country should continue to treat a whole group of people as second-class citizens? Is it appropriate to codify a lie, to pretend that there are no gays in the military ? Is it right to continue a policy that says to this group of Americans you are somehow not part of America, not entitled to help defend America, not someone whom we are willing to openly associate with in the military , even though every day in the workplace, every day in schools and colleges across America, we have learned to live and work together?

Mr. President, to codify discrimination in the military alone is not worthy of America. These are people who want to serve our country. They want to risk their lives and we respond instead by treating them like criminals, requiring them to hide from the fundamental part of their own identities not asked for but God given, forcing them into lives of secrecy and needless and senseless fear.