Don't Ask, Don't Tell
I just finished a DADT fic that, like most of the genre, was about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (the rest of the genre, meanwhile, seems to be based around how much DADT made a gay soldier's life utter hell and tend to be depressing; I rarely read those). It was a pretty good fic and I might have recced it, except for one thing: the author clearly didn't know a damn thing about DADT and while she's not alone in this, it's impossible for me to really enjoy a story written by someone ignorant of the very premise of her story. (I had the same problem reading a Sentinel fic where Jim threw out Chinese food because it contained the "toxin" MSG. MSG is not a toxin. It's a naturally occurring substance produced by yeast that gives a rounder, more meaty flavor to food. The only reason why it has such a bad rep is because that "S" in MSG stands for sodium, and it was easier to demonize a flavoring that no one (at the time) had ever heard of than to tell people they needed to stop eating table salt. As such, Jim would have tasted MSG in many foods that he ate, including anything at all that contained soy sauce. Grr.)
Here's the thing: Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a step forward for gay rights in the military. Before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, homosexuals were absolutely forbidden to enter the military and while that didn't actually stop them from signing up, it did mean that the military actively sought out homosexuals so they could be kicked out.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell came about when Bill Clinton was elected President. One of his goals during his presidency was to eliminate the ban on homosexuals in the military, but he was fighting a Republican congress and there was no chance that he could actually completely eliminate the ban. DADT was a compromise. Admittedly it was a bit of a ridiculous compromise (basically the legislative equivalent of putting fingers in your ears and saying "la, la, la, I can't hear you"), but without that compromise, there's a good chance that Obama wouldn't have been able to take that next step and open up the military to people who were openly homosexual. If nothing else, DADT gave gay soldiers something they could publicly fight against -- a gay person signing up for a military that expressly forbids him or her to do so puts the fault on the person signing up; a gay person signing up for a military that pretends he or she isn't gay is in a great position to point out how stupid that pretense is.
To sum up: if you're going to write a DADT repeal fic, that's fine. Heck, if you're going to write a DADT makes a soldier's life miserable fic, that's fine, too (though I probably won't read it). Just remember that life in the military before DADT wasn't a land of rainbows and shower orgies and that, whatever its flaws, DADT was a step forward, not a step back.
Here's the thing: Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a step forward for gay rights in the military. Before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, homosexuals were absolutely forbidden to enter the military and while that didn't actually stop them from signing up, it did mean that the military actively sought out homosexuals so they could be kicked out.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell came about when Bill Clinton was elected President. One of his goals during his presidency was to eliminate the ban on homosexuals in the military, but he was fighting a Republican congress and there was no chance that he could actually completely eliminate the ban. DADT was a compromise. Admittedly it was a bit of a ridiculous compromise (basically the legislative equivalent of putting fingers in your ears and saying "la, la, la, I can't hear you"), but without that compromise, there's a good chance that Obama wouldn't have been able to take that next step and open up the military to people who were openly homosexual. If nothing else, DADT gave gay soldiers something they could publicly fight against -- a gay person signing up for a military that expressly forbids him or her to do so puts the fault on the person signing up; a gay person signing up for a military that pretends he or she isn't gay is in a great position to point out how stupid that pretense is.
To sum up: if you're going to write a DADT repeal fic, that's fine. Heck, if you're going to write a DADT makes a soldier's life miserable fic, that's fine, too (though I probably won't read it). Just remember that life in the military before DADT wasn't a land of rainbows and shower orgies and that, whatever its flaws, DADT was a step forward, not a step back.