From One Social Issue To Another

I would belatedly like to express my happiness over the September 20 repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that allowed gays to serve in the military so long as they stayed in the closet.  Keeping them from serving openly was an affront to human dignity, and the issue was completely irrelevant to whether someone should serve in the military on the basis of sexual orientation.  As Barry Goldwater once said, you don't have to be straight to serve in the military, you just have to shoot straight.  (This policy won't likely be repealed if a Republican becomes President, because it's already allowed gays in the military to come out of the closet so quickly.  Repealing it would be like repealing the Thirteenth Amendment.)

But  now the Republican party has one again focused on another social issue - abortion.  This time the House is taking up yet another bill to, among other things, curb insurance coverage for abortions and penalize health insurers that provide it.  The vote is today.  I don't know all the details, but I know this much - not only does it do us no good for House Republicans who ran on the economy to suddenly focus on issues that have nothing to do with the economy, their renewed focus on abortion in an age when most countries have settled the issue and moved on, once again, makes us look the ignoramouses we are to the rest of the world.  

Don't Ask, Don't Enlist

Oh what a wonderful day it was when President Obama signed the bill repealing the odious policy requiring gays in the military to stay in the closet. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was consigned to the dustbin of history, and a new era of homosexual civil rights began, promising our gay brothers and lesbian sisters full equality in the national armed forces in which they serve!

If I sound like Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign sarcastically illustrating a potential Obama victory as the heralding of a new golden age, that's because what I wrote above isn't exactly true. Yes, Obama and the Democrats repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. But what the media aren't telling you (unless you read the Saturday morning paper, which no one does) is that the ban is actually still in effect. This is because one provision of the law is that the Pentagon reserves the right to keep the ban in place until its commanders are ready to certify the repeal. So far, despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates's support for lifting the ban, they have not done so.

The General Accounting Office may give the top brass some initiative in following Obama's and Gates's lead. It reported that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" cost the military $185.7 million in recruiting and training replacements for 3664 homosexual service personnel discharged for violating the ban, with an additional $7.7 million in administrative costs for doing all the paperwork involved. Also, many linguistic experts, along with other service personnel in critical assignments, were lost through the expulsions, hampering military readiness. So, lifting the ban would save money.

Homosexual rights groups hope that this will change the Pentagon's mindset and allow the lifting of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to go forward. Hey, there are those two words again - "hope" and "change." Right. I think the target date for lifting the ban is the twelfth of never . . ..

Just Say Hell No

The Republican party - a party once expected to fade away until the Democrats got blamed for the foundering economy and ended up looking like the Whigs of yore - has been showing its resurgence by saying no to everything in the lame-duck session of Congress. Senate Republicans have unanimously pledged to stop all Senate business until they get the tax cuts for the rich that they want. Even if the Democrats did stand up to them (don't give it a second thought, they won't), nothing to help the people will get accomplished.

That includes lifting the ban on gays in the military, which got a lot of momentum from a study released yesterday saying it wouldn't have an affect on unit cohesion. Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, military veterans both, have suggested that while lifting the ban can be done, the study fails to say whether it should be done. President Obama should come right out and tell the Republicans not to play semantics with him on this issue and make them feel the heat. Not in this month of December or in any other month will that happen.

As for the tax cuts, the only recourse for the Democrats is to let them expire and let the Republicans take the blame for a sudden tax hike on the middle class. But the Republicans never pay a price for leaving the unemployed high an dry by refusing to extend unemployment insurance, as they just did again. They only get applauded by those who have jobs for not spending more money on freeloading the jobless, even though benefits are meager for individual claimants and it would help the economy by generating two dollars worth of economic activity for every dollar paid out. If taxes go up, and the Democrats try to place the blame on Republicans for their refusal to compromise (again, not going to happen), Frank Luntz will probably come up with some scary slogan to deflect the blame to the Democrats (which will happen regardless).

All of this Republican brinkmanship over taxes have set the tone for the foreseeable future, and possibly beyond that. And the reason the Republicans are not in trouble for their greedy, swinish, nasty values is because the voters also have greedy, swinish, nasty values. Say what you will about Fox News, a lot of people are actually watching it.

Gay In America

Gay America has apparently reached a crossroads due to a pair of unrelated events. The suicide of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University student shown kissing with a fellow male student on a video secretly made and then distributed by Clementi's roommate Dharun Ravi, has forced many people to stop turning their backs on the persecution many gays, as well as anyone subject to bullying, and understand the severity of the bigtory and homophobia that gays in this country have had to endure. New Jersey governor Chris Christie has made it clear that this kind of bullying, which led Clementi kill himself, is intolerable and should not be allowed. The two students Ravi and fellow Rutgers student Molly Wei, who conspired with Ravi, face two counts of invasion of privacy, although they should certainly be subjected to greater charges than that. But the people of New Jersey and the United States have clearly been shown that the bullying of homosexuals can't go on.

Meanwhile, the "don't ask, don't tell" policy forcing gays to serve in the military closeted, has been thrown out by Judge Virginia Phillips, technically allowing gays to serve openly now and putting momentum on their side. Although Congress still hasn't been able to reverse the ban, thanks to so many Republicans being against it, it doesn't seem likely that the ban will hold much longer, even if the Republicans do gain control of one or both houses of Congress in three weeks.

As for New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's homophobic comments fed to him by an Hasidic rabbi. . . . Move along, nothing to see here! He's going to lose in November.

Sex and the Capitol

My, Washington, D.C. is quite involved with sexual politics, isn't it?

Yesterday the Senate tried to move on repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military that allows gays to serve in the armed forces as long as they stay in the closet. Harry Reid that that this would be a great way to gain some momentum in the midterm congressional elections by firing up the homosexual segment of the Democratic base - especially on an policy that an overwhelming majority of Democrats and an overwhelming majority of Americans support. But no one bothered to count the votes, and the Democrats thought it would be clever to attach the provision as a rider on a defense bill. It was Reid - still facing a serious challenge from Sharron Angle despite her incurable case of foot-in-mouth disease - that got taken for a ride. Not one Republican - even those few Republicans who support repealing "don't ask, don't tell" - would vote to bring it up for consideration on the grounds that the process wasn't proper.

So the bill failed, there are no chances of letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military any time soon, and the Democrats only managed to further discourage an already discouraged segment of their base. Gays and lesbians aren't even in a mood to give them an E for effort because Reid and his fellow Dems didn't come across as having made much of one. You know you're politically ineffective when Lady Gaga makes the case for open gay service in the military better than you do.

And what the @#** was she doing injecting herself into the issue, anyway?

I kind of like the days when pop musicians like Joan Baez tried to stop soldiers from going off to war rather than fighting for the rights of people to enlist. These times weren't meant for me.

From sexual orientation to sexual disorientation. Noted unindicted sex criminal David Vitter has had a case brought against him by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The CREW crew charges Louisiana's junior senator with subsidizing the personal expenses of staff member and domestic violence perpetrator Brent Furer after he was charged with abusing and threatening to kill his girlfriend. At issue is the charge the Furer was mostly on paid leave during the three months it took to resolve the case. Vitter's office has brushed it off, mostly by saying that the senator had merely expressed concern over Furer's behavior before he finally resigned, and that the media have misrepresented Furer's case. Furer's lawyer, meanwhile, has insisted that the case is behind him, and that he's putting his life back together.

And Louisiana Republicans have all collectively said, "Good enough for me!"

Four words: Charlie Melancon For Senate.

The details of the case are available here.

In Which They Serve

Homosexuals have never taken President Obama seriously when he has reiterated his commitment to repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" rule that allows gays to serve in the military but not openly. After all, the only issue he's dragged his heels on more is gun control. But Obama made the obvious point that Republican members of Congress have kept him from acting more boldly on the issue, and that repealing the rule and allowing gays to serve openly in the military requires patience and can't be done overnight given the current politics in Washington.

This week the House of Representatives gave the President, who has been yearning for good news lately in light of the BP disaster, a moral victory of sorts. The House passed a bill allowing gays to serve openly in the military pending a review from and approval by the four branches of the armed forces. The review, when completed, is likely to allow what the gay and lesbian population has longed for - to serve in the military with pride and dignity.

Not surprisingly, congressional Republicans have opposed it, claiming it's a left-wing social experiment that shouldn't be undertaken while these United States are in the middle of two wars. This is a laughable argument; what was wrong with allowing gays to serve openly in the military in peacetime, as President Clinton tried to do in 1993? And if it's good enough to try right-wing social experimentation in the form of treating corporations like people with regards to campaign financing, it should be okay to allow left-wing social experimentation as well. Allowing gays to serve openly in the military is not that. Most servicemen and servicewomen already serve knowingly alongside gay soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. They just can't say they do. Other than that, they're perfectly comfortable serving with their homosexual counterparts and would feel even more so if they gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in arms could come out of the closet.

A majority of Americans are for changing the policy and letting homosexuals serve openly in the military. So are most conservatives. The House has helped Obama by taking the step to make this change happen. If Senate Republicans try to filibuster any military appropriations bill that includes this repeal of the current policy, as they have threatened to do, they will only prove Obama right - that Washington politics is stopping him from moving forward on this issue - and gays will likely be easier on Obama. They should be, once they see who the real villain is.

Yes, it's sad that Obama can't just sign an executive order and allow gays to serve openly in the military, just as President Harry Truman did when he racially desegregated the troops in 1948. But Truman didn't have to deal with cable news pundits and the kind of ultrapartisanship we have today. He did suffer some political consequences, but he didn't have to do it through a 24-hour news cycle.

Shooting Straight

President Obama spread waves of shock and delight across the nation when he announced on Saturday that he planned to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of gays in in the military and allow them to serve openly in the armed services without fear of expulsion. Some military leaders have expressed fears that could have a demoralizing effect on the service. Funny, I thought the outsourcing of all their duties to Blackwater had already taken care of that.

The United States would thus become the last Western country to allow gays to serve openly in the military, though it's better late than never. Many homosexual rights advocates had been disappointed on Obama's record of gay civil rights, but it turns out he was with them all the time; it was just a matter of fitting them into his schedule. Health care, two wars, a rotten job market . . . sooner or later the White House had to pencil them in. Friday? No, they couldn't do that, they already had a moon-bombing mission scheduled. :-D

In addition to a big agenda, President Obama has to deal with another thing blocking repeal of "don't ask, don't tell. . . ." congressional and military opponents. Not to mention talk radio hosts. But the President seems to be slowly learning to go ahead and do the right thing, if only because he'd even getting attacked for what he chooses to eat for breakfast.

As for gays in the military, the late Barry Goldwater said it best when he said that you don't have to be straight to serve in the military. You just have to shoot straight.