Don't Ask, Don't Tell is as awful as "separate but equal"

By Diane Silver

Geoffrey R. Stone writes in the Chicago Tribune:

"Don't ask, don't tell" is not a policy that reflects true American values. Like "separate but equal," it is at best a transitional compromise with bigotry. Perhaps, for a time, it was a necessary evil. But by failing now to condemn that policy, the GOP presidential candidates have shamed themselves, their party and their nation.

Stone is a professor of law at the University of Chicago and the author of War and Liberty: An American Dilemma: 1790 to the Present.