Equality in the Military

New York Times Editorial: Equality in the Military
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: February 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/opinion/03wed1.html?th&emc=th


History was made on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. More than 16 years after their predecessors helped impose the odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the nation’s two top defense officials called on Congress to repeal the law that bans gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The principled courage of the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a major step forward for civil rights.

Their action leaves no further excuse for Republican lawmakers to go on supporting this discrimination. President Obama must not let the opponents of repeal, who are already mobilizing, keep this terribly unjust law on the books.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed by Congress in 1993, with the support of Les Aspin, who then was the secretary of defense, and Gen. Colin Powell, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It compelled gay men and lesbians to hide who they are and to live in fear of being reported. Many thousands of men and women have been drummed out of the armed forces under this law.

Critics argue that the presence of gay service members makes the military less unified and effective. There is strong evidence that this is not so, including the experiences of nations, such as Canada and Britain, where gays serve openly. A policy of driving out good and talented people — including ones with much-needed skills in Arabic, Farsi, and other languages — makes the military less effective.

At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a clear commitment to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” — following up on the promise President Obama made in his State of the Union address. The question, Mr. Gates said, “is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it.” He said, however, that more time will be needed to work out how to change the policy.

While the policy is being reviewed by the Pentagon’s top lawyer and the commander of the United States Army in Europe, Mr. Gates said the existing law will be carried out in a “more humane and fair manner.” One welcome change would be a decision by the military to no longer aggressively pursue discharge cases against people whose sexuality is revealed by third parties, including jilted romantic partners.

Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a federal law, the Obama administration will have to work to get Congress to repeal it. There will be considerable opposition. Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, declared his opposition on Tuesday. Representative John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans, indicated earlier that with two wars under way it was not the right time to change the policy.

In fact, it is an ideal time. The armed forces need every qualified person who wants to serve. Polls show that Americans broadly support repealing the law. President Obama has spoken out forcefully for jettisoning the policy, and his party controls both houses of Congress. The armed forces have evolved. Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called for a repeal, declaring that “as a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger, more cohesive military.”

The United States has traveled far since 1993 on gay rights. It is ready for a military built on a commitment to equal rights for all.



Washington Post Editorial: Repeal the military's 'don't ask, don't tell'
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, February 1, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101870.html


PRESIDENT OBAMA has been clear about wanting the reversal of the prohibition on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. He said so during the campaign. He repeated it at a gay-pride event at the White House last June. He reiterated it at a gay rights organization's dinner in October. And he was unambiguous when he told the nation during his State of the Union address, "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It's the right thing to do." The ball is now in Congress's court.

Many gay men and lesbians want Mr. Obama to issue a stop-loss order that would prevent the Defense Department from discharging troops under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, nearly 14,000 members of the armed forces have been booted from the military. But such an executive order would be a temporary solution. The 16-year-old policy is a creature of Congress. Thus, it is Congress that must permanently right this wrong.

Mr. Obama has been doing everything he can on his end to lay the groundwork for the repeal. He has told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on more than one occasion that he wants "don't ask, don't tell" abolished. They've responded accordingly: On Tuesday, Mr. Gates and Mr. Mullen are scheduled to offer recommendations before the Senate Armed Services Committee on how to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.

Their testimony should give needed momentum to efforts already underway on Capitol Hill. Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.) has been wearing down the soles of his shoes for more than a year to secure sponsors for the Military Readiness Enhancement Act. The Iraq war veteran now has 187 sponsors. He needs 218 votes to assure passage.

Advocates for gay men and lesbians and their allies should turn their focus from hammering Mr. Obama to flooding members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), with phone calls, e-mails and petitions supporting Mr. Murphy's bill to end "don't ask, don't tell." According to Gallup, 69 percent of Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of conservatives, favor repealing the law.

It's time for Congress to act.










Pentagon supports ending 'don't ask, don't tell' law for gays in military
By Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe
Copyright by The Washington Post
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020200251.html?wpisrc=nl_politics


The Pentagon's top leaders declared Tuesday for the first time that -- after decades of opposition and equivocation from the armed forces -- they support an end to the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.

"Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. His words were echoed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said the Pentagon is preparing for a repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" law.

That law has stood for 17 years, but the debate over allowing gays to serve openly stretches back much further. For the tradition-bound military, the issue has proved to be intractable, with some officers arguing that the integration of openly serving gays would demoralize fellow troops, even as critics of "don't ask, don't tell" insisted that military service should be a civil right.

Despite the remarkable shift in position by the Pentagon's leaders Tuesday, there remained serious questions about whether Congress and the White House are ready to keep pace.

A House bill that would overturn "don't ask, don't tell" has 187 co-sponsors, but Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), a powerful committee chairman, opposes it and has not let it come up for a vote.

The Senate, which invited Gates and Mullen to testify Tuesday, is moving cautiously. Worried that they lack the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, Senate leaders said they might try to add a temporary moratorium on discharges of gay service members to a defense spending bill, whose passage would require only majority approval.

President Obama said in his State of the Union address last week that he wants to work with Congress to repeal the law, but he has resisted pleas by gay rights groups to sign an executive order that would instantly mandate a change. On Tuesday, Vice President Biden promised to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy by the end of the year.

Speaking on MSNBC, he also defended the administration against critics who have questioned why the issue has become pressing now.

Richard Socarides, a Clinton White House official who served as an adviser on gay issues, predicted that Congress would take its cues from the military and eventually vote to allow gays to serve in the open. Mullen's public statement, in particular, he said, will influence lawmakers.

"It was highly significant, coming in a very historic setting and from the highest-ranking military man in our government, in uniform," Socarides said. "I found it quite compelling and an eloquent statement."

Mullen, 63, told senators that he had knowingly served with gays since 1968, when he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and that he thought it was wrong that they were forced to hide their sexual orientation.
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"No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," he testified.





Defending the Long Gay Line
By MAUREEN DOWD
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: February 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/opinion/03dowd.html?th&emc=th


I’ve had high hopes for Adm. Mike Mullen ever since I learned that his mom was an assistant to Jimmy Durante and his dad was a Hollywood press agent whose clients included Bob Hope, Ann-Margret, Phyllis Diller, Jimmy Stewart, Carol Burnett and Dyan Cannon.

On Tuesday, the craggy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed that a lifetime in the military has not knocked all the showbiz pizazz out of him.

“I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Mullen said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on dropping the archaic “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. “For me personally, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”

In heartfelt testimony to the senators, Mullen said: “I have served with homosexuals since 1968.” Acknowledging that they face death daily, he said that “putting individuals in a position that every single day they wonder whether today’s going to be the day, and devaluing them in that regard, just is inconsistent with us as an institution.”

In 1993, when Bill Clinton tried to do the right thing by allowing gays and lesbians in the military to be themselves, a predecessor of Mullen’s, Colin Powell, directed the embarrassingly public and retrograde rebellion by the generals against it, leading a conga line of heavy brass over to the White House to tell the president not to exercise his authority as commander in chief and order an end to one of the last vestiges of discrimination in the armed forces. Powell helped shape the gutless compromise that those who protect our country must live by a code of honor even while they’re legally bound to be less than honest.

Still traumatized by the 1993 pummeling Clinton endured, the Obama White House is inching forward, like soldiers under attack crawling on their bellies through the dirt, trying to avoid friendly fire from gay groups that want the law changed now and hostile fire from conservatives that want the law left alone.

Before Admiral Mullen and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates even made their opening statements, John McCain went on the attack against overturning the policy. Noting that gays and lesbians had served “admirably” and even given their lives, he said: “I honor their sacrifice, and I honor them.” Just as long as they deny their identity and pretend to be something they’re not.

The conservative senator who has always been known for honor and clarity cited “vast complexities” as a reason not to change the hypocritical policy, whatever that means, as well as the fact that “the Senate vigorously debated it in 1993.” (One complexity was our failure to realize that, with two wars in the Middle East, we might need some talented gay translators fluent in Arabic and Farsi.)

Yeah, nothing’s changed since 1993.

Even Powell now admits that “we definitely should re-evaluate it.” And Roland Burris, the Illinois senator, reminded his colleagues that it took Harry Truman to integrate the services: “At one time, my uncles and members of my race couldn’t even serve in the military, and we moved to this point where they’re some of the best and brightest that we’ve had — generals and even now the commander in chief is of African-American heritage.”

McCain jumped on his even-keeled fellow Republican, Bob Gates, and accused him of usurping Congressional authority by saying the military was pre-emptively preparing for a repeal of the law. I guess the former war hero doesn’t believe in military readiness.

The Arizona senator said the law was “imperfect but effective,” even though Admiral Mullen’s military journal, Joint Force Quarterly, called it a “costly failure” and denied that the cohesion of the forces would be hurt if gays and lesbians could be open about their sexuality, as they are in Britain and Canada.

Three years ago, McCain told a group of college students that he would drop his objections on the issue “the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy.’ ”

But, on Tuesday, when that day came, McCain ignored the top brass and found his own military emeritus. He waved a letter at Gates and Mullen, saying it was “signed by over 1,000 former generals and flag officers who have weighed in” against changing the policy.

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said that if they began to loosen one restriction, others might unravel, leading to a louche atmosphere brimming with “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization and body art.” Don’t ask, don’t tat.

In 1993, Sam Nunn, the conservative Georgia Democrat who was the leader of the Armed Services Committee, famously gave lawmakers a tour of a submarine and its showers to show what close quarters sailors endured, implying that it would be impossible to separate the men from the men if gays were out.

So it was a welcome sign of how things have changed that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stepped up to torpedo the hypocrisy, is an admiral.



Shame on John McCain....
Copyright by John Mixner
Feb 1 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/02/shame-on-john-mccain.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29

John-McCain Just as the President is beginning to show serious leadership and courage on DADT, Senator John McCain of Arizona has announced he will lead the change against repeal. The senator knows better and we all know that he knows better. Most likely in the "Hanoi Hilton" there were gay prisoners of war being tortured with the senator. McCain most certainly has served with men and women he knew were gay and witnessed them serving with distinction. And there is no question in my mind that the senator really doesn't believe that the morale of the United States military is so low that allowing open members of the LGBT community to serve would make this nation weak.

So why is the senator from Arizona leading the charge? Could it be he is being challenged from the right in a primary this year by J.D. Hayworth? Could it be that the famous independent and free spirit John McCain is willing to sell the rights and freedom of a entire class of Americans down the river for his own re-election effort? Sadly, I truly believe that is what is going on. Especially since his wife and daughter have come out for marriage equality, even making themselves visible in anti-Prop 8 advertisements.

Shame on him.

The man has been known as an independent thinker for years in American politics. How shameful that in his latter years he would allow himself to be taken prisoner by intolerant right wing voices. The lamentable slide started with his failed campaign for the Presidency in 2008, and it just keeps getting more and more distressing. The senator should invoke the spirit of America's true conservative, former Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who famously said, "I don't care if they are straight, I care if they shoot straight." McCain has shown great courage over the years in his life journey. How sad he can muster so little of it now.