Two ways come to mind. (1) "Don't tell" requires that a service member hide his or her orientation, and pressures them into deceiving others. It is immoral to pressure someone into committing deceit. (B) Because an openly homosexual is discharged, all homosexuals must remain closeted. This creates a blackmail risk--a foreign intelligence service may take pictures of a closeted homosexual and threaten to release them unless the service member becomes that service's agent. The service member discloses this to his command and is discharged, or he starts working for the adversary. Either way we have lost him.
Allowing homosexuals to serve openly solves the ethical dilemma and removes the threat of blackmail. So that's two benefits right there.
Let's hear them.
“No comment” is deceit?
that in no way is a benefit to the military and yet not one person can say how this will improve the military at all but you can be sure there will be many problems
What the critics are not considering is that we have thousands of gays serving now and I would assume most of them would still prefer not to be “outed” so the reaction is mostly a fear of the inappropriate acting out, which could be dealt with.
You make a valid point that if the threat of discharge were removed, the issue of blackmail and loss of competent men/women serving would be removed. Most service persons would still not want to “flaunt’ their sexuality...my perspective is that the country has gays in many corporations, professions etc. and most of our nation is not “San Francisco”.
DADT is currently not really an honest approach and that is troubling. If we are saying “we will accept your service” but keep a secret that in no way has affected your service or your current team, that is pretty hypocritical.