No need for a hunch...they have estimates. Although I have a hunch the the estimates are off because it relies on gay people reporting their own identity or nature of their household. It assumes that a) gay people know they're allowed to list their partner as a member of their household and b) a gay servicemember trusts the confidentiality of the American Community Survey and personal identifiable information won't be turned over to the military.

That said, these are the numbers available:

Out of all military, 2.2% are gay or lesbian.
Out of all men in the military, 1.5% are gay.
Out of all women in the military, 6.2% are lesbian.

You never hear about lesbians causing problems because no one is particularly worried about lesbians being too masculine to serve.

The problems that people imagine might happen are based on stereotypes and prejudices of gays and lesbians as well as men and women. And they're incapable of reconciling the cognitive dissonance in holding all those prejudices at the same time while insisting they have no prejudices.

I am indeed curious to know how those opposed to repealing DADT feel about the Navy lifting the ban on women serving on submarines.

Perhaps it's worth conceding that the policy hasn't been a complete failure, but a successful transitional policy.

The purpose of the DADT compromise was to prevent gay soldiers from getting harassed as they were under the previous policy. The "Don't Ask" portion is really "Don't pursue, don't harass." And the "Don't Tell" portion is really "If a gay servicemember is discovered to be gay, they will likely be harassed. So it's best if they are compelled to hide their sexual orientation."

It was the harassment, the hazing of gay soldiers, that disrupted unit cohesion. So the only way to protect the gay servicemember and unit cohesion was to discharge the gay servicemember. As anecdotal or rhetorical you may find this to be, the evidence of the hazing of gay soldiers was submitted as testimony when DADT legislation was crafted.

However we have evolved as a society inside and outside the military to be more tolerant of gay people. That makes it unnecessary to discharge gay soldiers if they are found out to be gay. However the military has to discharge them because it's a federal law that they have to.

Additionally, this unnecessary law often causes gay soldiers to under perform either due to the stress caused by the fear of being found out or intentionally being mediocre so as to not draw attention to themselves.

The old way didn't work either because the old way didn't get rid of gay soldiers. And there is actually no way to get rid of gay people. All it does is force gay people to have to stay in the closet, which is actually very difficult to do even if a gay person wants to be in the closet.

It's just a law of human nature. The more you appear to be hiding something the more people will seek to find out what it is you're hiding. The only gay people that succeed at staying in the closet are the ones that have learned, not only how to be dishonest really well, but to hide the fact that they're being dishonest. And I don't think dishonesty is a skill anyone finds commendable.

Yes, and male and female soldiers work together without women hiding the fact that they're women.

Gay men and women are perfectly capable of controlling themselves. We know this because gays are already serving in the military--some of them are already out. Gay soldiers will have to adhere to the very same standards of conduct as heterosexual soldiers.

Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell does not mean they'll be openly "sexual", just openly gay--meaning they won't get kicked out if they happen to mention their family or get caught corresponding with their partner. Gay men know they would put themselves in physical danger if they were inappropriately sexual in a situation where they are outnumbered, literally, 100 to 2.

If sexual harassment is your concern, 1/3 of those discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell have been women. Many of whom were reported for being lesbian by male soldiers they rejected. 43% of gays currently serving are women despite that women only make up 14% of active duty personnel.

You are correct. Banning gay marriage isn't about dictating who can sleep with whom. It's about dictating who can have a family.

Gay activists didn't pick the fight with marriage--conservatives did. Transport back to the 90s, gays weren't particularly interested in getting married. Actually quite the opposite, gays wanted liberation from marriage. Gay activists just wanted access to the same privileges that married heterosexuals get.

The mere threat of gays getting married has been a useful political wedge for conservatives. From DOMA in 1996, to putting same-sex marriage bans on ballots in 13 states in 2004 where there was no gay marriage movement. Plus introducing a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that would never get ratified, just to get the votes on record to campaign on. And then 7 more anti-gay marriage state ballot initiatives in 2006.

I can't tell you what it's like have legislation targeted directly against you, your specific class, enshrined in state constitutions and federal law.

At some point we had to fight back simply because it is demoralizing to see folks putting our families up for popular vote and debating the value and worth of our families.

And you are right, we will stop at nothing because at this point we're protecting our families. Because a lot of these state same-sex marriage bans went beyond prohibiting gays from getting married, but prohibited "marriage-like rights"--meaning they ban domestic partnerships and even Power of Attorney contracts.

When you take something away from people that they didn't even have to begin with, what you take away is their dignity.

Hey, you brought up the socialism. There's a difference between being fascinated and calling someone you know to be female a "he" repeatedly. And then you act like that's totally different from disparaging someone because they're gay. You're engaging in social pressure to get people to conform, and then you cry socialism. Please. I've heard this stuff all my adult life.

I'm surprised, given how much you're fascinated by her appearance, you didn't pick up on the ancestry too. Maybe you were too busy doing a crotch and tit check.

It appears to me these boards are bests for sexist and gender policing fun and people who just replace one form of bigotry for another.

On the contrary, progressives love teaching civics and history.

You're aware that today the people that would be most affected by a civics literacy test, if it was given to everyone, would be the lower class right? And mostly Southerners, the GOP stronghold. I'm opposed to disenfranchising voters, even if they're Republican voters.

I mean, it's pretty obvious that the GOP is uninterested in debating public policy and the base doesn't seem to care. That indicates to me that Republican voters don't know much about civics...and the fact that they can't understand how Obama gets elected and why Republicans can't pass anything as a minority party.

This is basic majority rule stuff.

I provided examples of actual questions from those old civics literacy tests above.

"If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted? "

"In what year did the Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states?"

"Who is the solicitor general of the state judicial circuit in which you live and who is the judge of such circuit? If such circuit has more than one judge, name them all."

"What does the Constitution of Georgia provide regarding the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus?"

These are civics questions, they are questions about law and government.

If that's not enough, here's an actual test given to Aftican-American voters in Georgia in 1958: http://content.sos.state.ga.us/u?/adhoc,552

And here's Albama's 1965 Voter literacy test: http://www.ccle.fourh.umn.edu/literacy.pdf

So, you can see for yourself, they were civics literacy tests. A civics literacy test would be a test about civics. That's what he said, that's what he meant.