Out and serving proudly: Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

The U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy has been controversial since its adoption in 1993. The policy has been criticized as discriminatory for tolerating or fostering homophobic attitudes and behavior, and as detrimental to military effectiveness. This article examines the results of recent votes in the U.S. Congress to repeal DADT to identify factors that may predict members' votes on morality issues, such as DADT. Our results demonstrate that the members' political ideology and the political party preference of the members' home district or state are strong predictors of how the members voted on repeal of DADT. For members of the House of Representatives, freshmen members were more likely than their colleagues to vote in ways that coincided with the political preferences of their home district.