DADT Repeal? There’s Movement!

Filed in National by on May 24, 2010

Steve Benen lays out what’s going on.

Key votes pending in Congress this week on whether to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibits openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military remain too close to call, advocates on both sides say.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to vote by the end of the week on an amendment to the annual defense spending bill that would end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which Congress passed in 1993. Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) favors a repeal, but it is unclear whether he has enough votes, with six senators on the panel considered undecided, legislative sources said.

The House is expected to vote on a similar measure this week, based on a repeal proposal sponsored by Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.), an Iraq war veteran. The House Armed Services Committee declined to act on Murphy’s bill in passing its version of the defense spending measure last week, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has told gay advocacy groups that she will allow a floor vote if there is enough support in favor of a repeal.

[…]

There have been rumors about increasing engagement on this issue from the Obama administration, and The Advocate reports that there were concurrent meetings this morning at the White House and on Capitol Hill that “could help clear the way” for a deal that would add a repeal provision to the upcoming defense appropriations bill.

Benen is also saying that we may see an S.A.P. (Statement of Administration Policy) on this as early as tomorrow, which would give the effort another added boost.

I say… Boost away!


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Comments (30)

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  1. PBaumbach says:

    about freakin’ time

  2. This is good news and it should also help fire up the Democratic base. It’s long past time for DADT to go.

  3. Ted Kaufman is on the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Everyone make sure you call to tell him you support DADT repeal. It wouldn’t hurt to call Carper and Castle as well.

  4. A.price says:

    it also wouldnt do any good to call carper and castle

  5. anonone says:

    More sleight of hand from the Obomba administration.

    From AP:
    “A proposal to step up the repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military but still allow the Pentagon time ā€” perhaps even years ā€” to implement new policies was being discussed Monday by administration officials and gay rights activists.”

    Like HCR which isn’t really HCR, the White House is trying to repeal DADT without having to actually repeal DADT. I guess that this is the “centerist” position.

  6. MJ says:

    As usual, nothing is good enough for Comrade A1.

  7. MJ says:

    More information on DADT repeal. Hopefully, we will begin 2011 without this gay-Jim Crow law. Note that the Pentagon report is due on December 1, 2010. My recommendation to my colleagues over at the Pentagon is to start drafting new regulations now.

  8. The WH and members of Congress have agreed to a compromise. Hopefully this means DADT repeal will come to a vote.

  9. anonone says:

    There is nothing in the “compromise” that says that DADT must be repealed. That’s a fact. Congress wanted to vote for repeal, but the White House stopped them, ostensibly because they were worried about public opinion. So the White House gets to cross DADT off its list while kicking actual repeal of DADT down the road. Anybody catching on yet?

  10. pandora says:

    Do you have a link, A1?

  11. MJ says:

    Actually, the vote in the Armed Services committee is on DADT REPEAL! It’s readily apparent that A1 has no idea “how the sausage is made” in either DC or Dover.

    A1, you are the typical political purist – nothing is good enough for you unless it’s 100%. Well, nothing in politics/government is ever 100%. The reason we have DADT and DOMA in the first place is because HRC and the other self-appointed gay leaders of the time demanded immediate action on their demands before lining up the necessary support in Congress. Then they lost control of the message.

    A1, you’re a far-leftwing teabagger. You suck the life out of this blog and add nothing to the discussion. Go start your own blog where you can rant and rave all you want about how President Obama had let you down. Seriously, do it – or I’ll have to release my flying monkeys on you.

  12. Don’t need it repealed. It is good law. No nation’s military has been bettered by this type of social experimentation.

  13. anonone says:

    MJ, those who demand little get little. Those who blindly respect authority never get that respect returned. And many things in government and politics are 100%. We should demand no less.

    Pandora, here is the link and an excerpt:

    “The House and Senate will pass legislation this year that provides that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be considered repealed if and when the following happens:

    1. The Secretary of Defense receives the “study.”
    2. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify that:
    – They have considered the recommendations in the study
    – DOD has prepared the necessary policies and regulations needed to implement a repeal
    – The implementation of the repeal is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention.

    Current policy will remain in place until the above conditions are satisfied. And if the above conditions are never satisfied, the current DADT policy will remain in place.

    There is nothing in the legislation that says the repeal must happen.”

    From:

    http://gay.americablog.com/2010/05/text-of-dadt-repeal-legislation.html

  14. anonone says:

    More links for pandora:

    From AP:

    “The White House had hoped lawmakers would delay action until Pentagon officials had completed their study so fellow Democrats would not face criticism that they moved too quickly or too far ahead of public opinion in this election year. When administration officials recognized they could not stop Congress in its effort to repeal the ban, they invited gay rights activists to the White House to work on a compromise Monday.”

    and

    “Implementation of new policy on gays serving openly would still require the approval of President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. How long implementation might take is not known.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_go_co/us_gays_military

  15. MJ says:

    David, you’re just an asshat. Israel’s armed forces are stronger than before because they don’t exclude openly gay citizens. Same with Britain and the Netherlands. Guess we should roll back the clock 62 years and exclude all of the Blacks since that was “social experimentation” that was doomed to destroy the military. And while we’re at it, let’s exclude women, too.

    A1 – those who demand without any knowledge about how things work are doomed to be disappointed and live an angry, lonely life. And if you’re following that rag by John Aravosis, well, that just explains why you’re so screwed up. Aravosis posts too many items with nothing to back up his statements. He tries, too hard it seems, to be DC’s answer to Perez Hilton, yet he doesn’t have the talent or the following (not that Hilton has that much talent). He’s a sad excuse for a blogger and is dismissed by the gay and lesbian community in DC as a know-nothing, much like you. Now, take cover – the first wave of flying monkeys are coming for you.

  16. anonone says:

    By the way, MJ, it is odd how you blame DADT and DOMA on gays and lesbians rather than on the bigots and religious zealots who implemented it.

  17. MJ says:

    I put the blame where it deserves to be placed. I was involved in HRC and the discussions with the WH on lifting the ban. As I said, the so-called gay and lesbian leaders at that time wanted no compromise – it was all or nothing. Well, they were not politically savy, they didn’t do their due dilligence and we got DADT and DOMA. So, unless you were there and were part of the movement and were working on these issues, STFU.

  18. anonone says:

    I also gave you links from the AP, which says the same thing. And regardless of what you think of John Aravosis, his facts are correct here and he doesn’t blame the victims of DOMA and DADT for the actions of the haters and bigots who oppress them.

    And my life is far from angry or lonely.

  19. MJ says:

    A1 – you remind me of the socialist workers party candidates who ran for office in Denver and DC. They were for everyone’s rights and freedoms, yet when you dug deep down, you discovered that they were only in it for themselves and would subjugate the very people they were “fighting” for. A “fact” to Aravosis is what everyone else calls rumor and innuendo.

  20. Bill Clinton’s take on DADT FWIW is that DADT was not implemented how he envisioned. It wasn’t supposed to make things worse for LGBT in the military, it was supposed to be more like “don’t tell, ignore.” Yes, that’s a lousy compromise but Clinton’s take was that he was abandoned by his allies when he needed them most. He was left alone against his critics.

  21. pandora says:

    And yet if Clinton hadn’t taken that step (yes, it was lousy) would we be where we are today?

  22. Good question, pandora.

    Also, I don’t want to ever want to be the kind of person who treats every political victory like a defeat. Repeal of DADT is a huge victory as far as I’m concerned. There certainly are issues that the military has to study mostly concerning people who were discharged under DADT. Do they get their jobs back? What about pensions?

  23. anonone says:

    MJ, blaming the GBLT community for DADT and DOMA is like blaming Rosa Parks for segregation.

    But I see that you have taken the same strategy of “attack the messenger when you can’t refute the facts.” There isn’t one fact that I have cited here about the current DADT “repeal” bill that isn’t verifiably true. Not one. The simple and plain truth is that this bill does not repeal DADT; it kicks it down the road to some other day and to somebody else’s decision. Maybe the next time it comes up Obomba or whoever is President will decide that it still isn’t the time. Who knows? You don’t and neither do I.

    So if you think that the fight is over with the passage of this so-called DADT repeal bill, it isn’t.

  24. pandora says:

    Here’s an interesting take – and I say interesting because, well, I agree with it! šŸ™‚

    Here’s why that scenario shouldn’t scare us. 2010 is not 1993. The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and the Republican Secretary of Defense have called for open gay service. The public supports open service overwhelmingly, and that includes a majority of Republicans. Within the ranks, people just don’t care. Sure, there are some die-opponents in uniform. But their numbers are small and dwindling. Polls show that the number of service members who feel strongly about the issue is trivial, somewhere around 5 or 10 percent depending on the survey.

    I’m sure that future Republican administrations will try to force gay troops back into the closet. And it would be much better to have a legal promise of nondiscrimination than an executive order or Pentagon regulation. That said, the regulatory path will be durable. Ex-president George Bush tried to undo a Clinton-era executive order mandating non-discrimination among non-military federal employees, and he couldn’t get away with it. As Ana Marie Cox has pointed out, racial integration was wildly unpopular when President Truman implemented it via executive order, and that policy has persisted for more than six decades.

    The bottom line is this. The main obstacle to equality is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. The Obama administration has bravely pursued the only politically viable path to getting rid of that law. Equal treatment will take a little longer to achieve. But, assuming that Congress adopts the compromise proposed yesterday, the administration’s achievement will be damn good, even historic. That’s what counts.

    Would I prefer no compromise? Sure, but I’ve come to accept that I’m not in the mainstream. So, keep moving the ball down the court. Once this step is in place people will – as they’ve always done – take it as the norm, and once that happens… take the next, and final, step.

    I’m sure that comment now labels me as a sell-out homophobic, but I’m about winning the war.

  25. MJ says:

    A1 – can’t you read? Did I blame the GLB community (sorry, transgender, IMO, is not sexual orientation and doesn’t belong with the rest of my community)? No, I laid the blame where it belonged – with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the self-appointed leaders of the GLB community back then. And, if you’ll ever learn to read, I was involved with HRC and was involved with the discussion for lifting the ban back in the early part of the Clinton administration. So I know where the mistakes were made and where to lay the blame. Oh, and if I’m correct, President OBAMA will still be in office on December 1, 2010 when the final Pentagon report is due. Hmm, seems like it will be his decision.

    Not shooting the messenger, but pointing out how much of a windbag you really are, one who adds nothing to any of the discussions on this blog.

  26. anonone says:

    Under the proposed legislation, it isn’t just Obomba’s decision. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs also have to agree. And who knows what the study is going to say and when implementation will occur? Based on their record to-date, I don’t trust this administration at all.

    Look, we both hope DADT is repealed sooner than later. Is this bill a step in the right direction? Yes. Is repeal a done-deal yet? No. Do I trust this administration to do the right thing? No. Maybe that is where we really disagree.

    When DADT is finally repealed in fact, we’ll both celebrate. Until then, no rest.

  27. delacrat says:

    Comment by pandora on 25 May 2010 @ 10:51 am:

    “Iā€™m sure that comment now labels me as a sell-out homophobic, but Iā€™m about winning the war.”

    That in a nutshell is what is wrong with liberals today.

    Liberals are about “winning wars” and getting people into the military, when they should be about ending wars and getting people out of the military.

  28. pandora says:

    You are ridiculous, delacrat.

    I also said keep moving the ball down the court. Guess I’m all about sports, too.

  29. Reading comprehension fail.