Legislative Background on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Recent Action in Congress
During his campaign for the presidency, Bill Clinton proposed issuing an executive order to override Department of Defense regulations that banned the service of gay people in the U.S. armed forces. Shortly after his inauguration in 1993, President Clinton asked the secretary of defense to prepare a draft policy to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, with the “practical problems” involved in the change to be sorted out in the interim. Origins of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The first piece of legislation enacted during the Clinton presidency, the Family and Medical Leave Act, contained a six-month moratorium on…
