Time for DADT Repeal is Now
For the first eighteen months of my dissertation research, I focused on the broad topic of my paper, the Olympian Athene and her role in men’s lives. Yet, I barely wrote a word of the project’s text. Not until I realized that I was “missing” a chapter in my initial outline did I find my focus.
As soon as I did the research for that chapter, I found myself writing it. It dawned on me that I needed to treat the endeavor not as one long paper, but as a series of shorter ones. In the subsequent six months, I have written four such papers, about 60% of the project’s text and in the next ten days expect to add another 15-20% to that tally.
The lesson was simple: divide up the project, focus on one piece at a time.
And that is how I would go about the various items on the agenda of the gay organizations, take an issue-by-issue approach, starting with the proverbial “low-hanging fruit,” those bills most easily enacted. The next item, as I’ve been arguing for at least six months, would thus be legislation repealing Don’t Act/Don’t Tell (DADT). We should pressing for repeal no matter what the Administrations says.
Unlike the Democrats’ health care overhaul, the more time the American people have to consider repeal of DADT, the more they move in the direction of the Administration’s position, or, perhaps, given Mr. Gibbs’ comments yesterday, I should say, the Administration’s ostensible position. With even a majority of conservatives favoring repeal, pushing repeal would seem to be a no-brainer.
As we consider Gibbs’ comments, let us ask if, in the wake of Obama’s election, the national gay organizations ever met as a group and/or with representatives of the then-incoming Administration to plot strategy, setting down issue priorities and time lines. From where I stand, it seems that given “Gay Inc’s” enthusiasm for the Democratic Party, the heads of those organizations just assumed that now the Republicans were out of power, the new powers that be would move swiftly on gay priorities. Guess they based that assumption on the Clinton Administration’s record of accomplishment.
Now, given the disastrous manner with which that Democratic Administration handled the issue of gays in the military, it made sense not to push repeal of the ban in the first months of Obama’s term. Yet, now they seem to keep pushing it back. And back. And back. And then further back.
In the wake of Gibbs’ statement yesterday, it’s time once again to test the mettle of the national gay organizations. Given all the money they have raised and all the cover they have provided for the Democratic Party, they should have some influence with its congressional leadership. They need to press them to move forward on DADT despite the White House’s recent indifference.
NB: I cleaned up some of the language in a few paragraphs where my meaning wasn’t clear — or clumsily expressed.
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Wouldn’t it blow some minds if the Republicans take Congress in November and then pass a resolution supporting the repeal of DADT? (I believe DADT can only be repealed by the President but a Sense of the Congress resolution would be most interesting.)
Comment by ShrinkWrapped — April 22, 2010 @ 8:55 pm - April 22, 2010
I do believe that a majority of conservatives really do favor the repeal of DADT, and that’s a very sad comment on the modern conservative movement. Today’s conservatism has abandoned values. It’s become a movement concerned only with fiscal issues, which are very important but, to paraphrase Jesus, what does it profit a nation to gain fiscal order but lose its soul?
Traditionalism no longer has an advocate in conservatism. Rather, conservatism has become just another voice trashing traditional values and those who believe in them. Today’s conservatism is really nothing more than social liberalism behind a thin veneer of Reagan sounding fiscal talk. The repeal of DADT isn’t about justice; it’s about legitimizing an aberrant sexual impulse. There are other aberrant sexual impulses out there. When will a majority of conservatives support legitimizing them? Sooner than we think, I fear.
Comment by Seane-Anna — April 22, 2010 @ 9:09 pm - April 22, 2010
I don’t know that what goes on behind closed doors is ours to judge- but my thought is that gays can kill people and break things just as effedtively as straights
Comment by BigShooter — April 22, 2010 @ 10:11 pm - April 22, 2010
“I don’t know that what goes on behind closed doors is ours to judge- but my thought is that gays can kill people and break things just as effedtively as straights.”
So can pedophiles, polygamists, whoremongers, and people who practice incest, just to name a few. Time for the military to put its imprimatur on those behaviors, too?
Comment by Seane-Anna — April 22, 2010 @ 11:48 pm - April 22, 2010
eh, I can think of few less important problems than DADT.
You speak of the passage of DADT in political terms. I agree with your co-bloggers who recognize the most important factor in military strategy is not popularity polls but military readiness and effectiveness. The time for DADT to be repealed is when doing so wont harm military effectiveness, readiness or recruitment.
Those are the terms under which Americans should view this issue, not political correctness or some false idea that the military needs to be fair.
It doesnt. It needs to kill people and break things.
Until we know that those wont be affected, then the time for repeal is not now, it’s later.
Comment by American Elephant — April 23, 2010 @ 2:03 am - April 23, 2010
I’m confused here. Are you suggesting that special interest groups should be meeting with an administration to help set military policy?
Comment by American Elephant — April 23, 2010 @ 2:08 am - April 23, 2010
One thing I agree with is that it has been very curious that the Obama administration has NOT moved on a policy change that so much of the public supports.
So far, I’ve only been able to come up with two explanations:
1. They’re holding off until election season, hoping to use the issue to divide Republicans, or
2. people IN the military may not be as enamored of the idea as the rest of the country, and the pentagon may fear that recruitment and reenlistment may suffer as a result.
And we are currently at war in two countries, keep in mind.
Dont know what the correct answer is, but I’m pretty certain that, in war time especially, the political popularity of a policy is just about the least important consideration, not the first.
Comment by American Elephant — April 23, 2010 @ 2:22 am - April 23, 2010
Im straight and a former sailorIm in favor of repealing DADT. however not at this time. We are in the middle of a war. and lets face a fact. WHile i believe gays can serve, the thought of open gays is scary to alot of serving men and women..in fact the majority of them. I just feel that our men and women both gay and have enough to worry about without the added stress of political corectness. I know ill prob get alot of nast grams from this. but sometimes there are things more important and take presidence
Comment by jason Z — April 23, 2010 @ 4:23 am - April 23, 2010
Seane-anna,
“So can pedophiles, polygamists, whoremongers, and people who practice incest”
I’d point out that those are all illegal, and the potential for blackmail is still there, something that has long since faded from the issue of homosexuals.
I know the rank and file are divided, but I’ll take the words of my little brother, born and raised in Appalachia like me, to heart. “I’ve been in the army 8 years. As long as they can do the job and I can trust them in a fire fight, I don’t care.”
(Well, the whoremonger part… Three minute men)
Comment by The_Livewire — April 23, 2010 @ 6:52 am - April 23, 2010
My two older sons are both in the military and have told me that the ban on open Homosexuals in the military has cost us the talents and abilities of some very capable people. In time of war, we cannot afford such a policy.
Comment by ShrinkWrapped — April 23, 2010 @ 8:11 am - April 23, 2010
Oh geez, i didnt even see Seane Anna’s sermon.
Seane Anna,
I hate to burst your bubble, but our servicemen have been drinking like fish, smoking, screwing women who aren’t their wives and swearing like…well, like sailors… since the formation of the Republic.
The purpose of the military is not to reflect YOUR values any more than it is to reflect liberal values.
The purpose of the military is to be a fighting machine that kills people better, faster, more accurately, and more efficiently than any enemy they go up against.
The ONLY pertinent question about values to the military is how do they improve or detract from that mission. If allowing gays to talk about their boyfriends at work helps keep people, like Arabic translators, that we need, then that is what we should do. If allowing gays to tell everyone how gay they are causes distractions, and disruptions, or causes other people that we need to leave the military, then I’m sorry, gays can keep their yaps shut or get kicked out. They gave up their rights to freedom of speech when they joined, and their predecessors have been doing it for generations.
If the truth is in some murky middle, then the military must err on the side of readiness, effectiveness, whatever you want to call it. and a POX on BOTH SIDES social agendas. You are distracting the military in the middle of two wars for crying out loud!
Comment by American Elephant — April 23, 2010 @ 8:39 am - April 23, 2010
American Elephant -
“The Army is not a sociological laboratory; to be effective it must be organized and trained according to the principles which will insure success. Experiments to meet the wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat.”
–
Right?
That was Col. Eugene R. Householder, addressing a gathering of Negro Editors and Publishers the day after Pearl Harbor, to tell them that the Army couldn’t Integrate now.
It was BS then, and is BS now. Or are you saying that segregation aided the war effort in WWII?
More on that subject at Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 by Morris J. MacGregor, Jr. Published by the Center of Military History, United States Army.
Comment by Zoe Brain — April 23, 2010 @ 8:54 am - April 23, 2010
1. Gays are already integrated into the military.
This is not an discussion about whether gays should be allowed to serve, they already can and already do. Nor is it a discussion about whether gays should be integrated, they already are.
So your argument is fatuous.
It is a discussion about what behaviors are relevant to the job and what behaviors distract and compromise military readiness.
2. We will never know how integration would have affected the WWII war effort because Truman was not an idiot and didn’t order a massive social experiment in the middle of a war. He ordered integration in 1948, well after WWII and before the Korean War
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