Seemingly out of nowhere, the Pentagon announced this week that it would lift its ban on women in combat. Just like that. No years-long Washington lobbying campaign, no protracted national culture-war debate, no threats by conservatives in Congress to do everything humanly possible to block progress -- in other words, nothing like the decades-long fight the nation saw over letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.
The differences between the two political battles are stark, yet the substance of the two debates has great overlap. In both cases, advocates of equality pointed out that merit and ability to do the job should be more important than the cultural beliefs of one segment of society, and they showed that there was no research indicating that equal treatment harmed the military. Opponents of both open gays and women in combat cited concerns about military effectiveness, suggesting -- but never proving -- that reform carried great risk to the military and thus to national security.
