"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a policy on military service that allowed homosexual and bisexual US-Americans to serve their country as long as they kept their sexual identity secret. Part of the act was - and that was a crucial change - that superiors were not supposed to initiate investigations of service members' orientation as it had been common practice before. Signed in 1993 by Bill Clinton (who knew that it was "not a perfect solution"), the policy was seen as a compromise between "those who wanted to end the longstanding ban on gays serving in the U.S. military and those who felt having openly gay troops would hurt morale and cause problems within military ranks".
It was seen as a liberal step, as an approach to allow queer US-Americans be part of the military. At the same time, they were forced into secrecy since only closeted members or applicants were protected from discrimination. People who were said to "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" were not allow to serve in the armed forces as their presence would "create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability". Coming out of the closet meant being discharged.
In 2011, Barack Obama announced the repeal of the policy. In 2016, the ban on transgender service members was lifted (via and via).
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photograph (Contemporary Muses) by Kameliya Stoeva via
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