Is the Sun Setting on DADT?

The Boston Globe's Bryan Bender notices something interesting:

An article in the Pentagon’s top scholarly journal calls in unambiguous terms for lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces, arguing that the military is essentially forcing thousands of gay men and women to lead dishonest lives in an organization that emphasizes integrity as a fundamental tenet.

The article in the upcoming issue of Joint Force Quarterly, which is published for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was written by an Air Force colonel who studied the issue for months while a student at the National Defense University in Washington and who concludes that having openly gay troops in the ranks will not hurt combat readiness.

Unit cohesion has always been the "respectable" argument to make if you favor excluding gays from the military. I'm sure there will be those who continue to make it. But with papers like this one, it's going to be increasingly difficult to take that argument at face value and not wonder whether something else is motivating the opposition to the repeal of DADT. And, as Bender notes, while the decision to publish the paper was ultimately made by the journal's editorial board, Mike Mullen's office did review the article before it was published--which could be an indication that the Pentagon is beginning to lay the groundwork to do something about DADT.