Eugene Volokh on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell":

[Theophylact]

He deals with the question of what it means to "challenge everybody with [one's] sexual orientation."

A reader writes:

Well, it seems to me that there are lots of ways that it can come to anyone's attention that someone is a lesbian. How does it come to someone's attention that a straight man has a girlfriend? Someone might ask "What did you do over the weekend?," and he might decide to be honest and say "I went to a movie with my girlfriend," rather than evading the subject or lying. Or he might put a picture of his girlfriend on his desk. Or he might bring his girlfriend to a party, and be seen holding hands with her. Or when his commanding officer expresses concern about why he seems unhappy, he might honestly say "Sorry, sarge, my girlfriend left me" or "Captain, my girlfriend has been unhappy with all this moving from post to post; can you give me some advice about trying to get an assignment that will work better for us?"

None of this, I take it, constitutes "challenging everybody with [one's] sexual orientation"; few people would tell the man "shut up about your sex life," or kick him out of the service for saying something. And yet if a lesbian did the same, my understanding is that this would qualify as enough "telling" to at least potentially lead to a dismissal (though I realize that in many places the commanding officers would turn a blind eye to it). ...

[J-Excel]

Don't ask, don't tell was a terrible decision.