If you wanted it without bias you should have told me sooner

I've written before about the mess the Department of Defense is digging for itself as it tries to end the Don't Ask Don't Tell ban on gays in the military. As part of their useless year long study costing millions, the DoD said they needed to survey active soldiers. That survey is now in the email inbox of soldiers around the world -- and has been leaked to the civilian world. I haven't looked over the whole thing (or the parts available).

What I have seen -- and what others have commented on -- show it to be an outstandingly bad example of an unbiased survey. Put another way, it is a great example of push-polling, the practice of phrasing questions to reinforce the answer the poller wants to prove. Example:

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you are assigned to bathroom facilities with an open bay shower that someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian Service member also used, which are you most likely to do? Mark 1.

-Take no action
-Use the shower at a different time than the Service member I thought to be gay or lesbian
-Discuss how we expect each other to behave and conduct ourselves
-Talk to a chaplain, mentor, or leader about how to handle the situation
-Talk to a leader to see if I had other options
-Something else
-Don't know

Gay groups, especially those dealing with service members, are furious. They point out the use of inflammatory language and of bias-inducing questions. They list the insulting wording, assumptions, and insinuations. They point out that rephrasing the questions to replace "gay" with any of "black," "Jew," or "woman" would get the perpetrators fired pronto and the survey shut down. Of course, the homophobia of the troops will be recorded in the results because the survey made that nastiness permissible. And then the results will be used as a weapon to say repeal of the policy isn't possible.

A consolation is that the troops in the field are laughing at the survey. They see it as proof that the military leadership is clueless. That's not good either.