Q Toon: Miltary Edginess Survey

This week's cartoon concerns a Pentagon survey of military spouses of their attitudes about the possible end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The 44-question poll includes such questions as “Assume Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed. Would repeal affect your family readiness?” and “Assume Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed and you live in on-base housing. If a gay or lesbian Service member lived in your neighborhood with their partner, would you stay on-base or would you try to move out?"

Servicemembers United claims that the survey poses questions that assume that lesbians and gays are scary people, and supposes that repeal of DADT would be difficult for military families to handle.

Just as the assumption that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would be problematic for straight troops is an insult to the professionalism of straight troops, so to is the assumption that the law’s repeal would be problematic for families an insult to military families and military spouses. The assumption that spouses and families might be ill-prepared to handle such a simple and long-overdue policy change insults their own professionalism, their generation’s non-discriminatory values, their unique ability to handle diversity, and their battle-hardened ability to handle any changes that the military throws their way.

This week, I have a little fun with the military, and with polling. And while this particular survey was sent by e-mail, it's more fun to draw people interacting each other in the real world than over their computer, so I drew this rather old-fashioned door-to-door approach.