The good news is that the Pentagon just announced that they will no longer investigate service members’ sexual orientation based on anonymous tips. In other words, to the degree possible they don’t intend to enforce the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. Of course, they still have to act on cases where a service member reveals that they are gay or lesbian themselves. The bad news is that the Pentagon review on abolishing the policy entirely isn’t required to provide their conclusions until December 1st, which is after the midterm elections. That may be by design, but I think it works against the Democrats. They would do better to fulfill that campaign promise before the midterms. Perhaps we can have the repeal in the queue, but the obvious place for it would be in the must-pass Defense Appropriations bill and that bill is normally the first appropriations bill to pass, which I would expect to be before election day. Thoughts?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Thoughts?
Cynical ploy to try to retain the homophobe/bigot vote for the upcoming election….they’re relaxing the Rule somewhat, but dragging their feet on the Campaign Promise to Repeal.
Rather than fretting about the personnel who would resign in the face of DADT repeal, they should be asking themselves “are these the kind of soldiers we really want as the face(s) of our Military?”
Kiss the bigots on the cheek, then kick ’em in the ass…. General Discharge, seeyalater…
Outside of some of the more conservative congressional districts and maybe a handful of states, I don’t think gay-bashing is a winning political position anymore. It can help the GOP get out their base, but their base is coming out in this next election anyway, and for totally different reasons. If the Dems are delaying for political reasons, I think they’re making the wrong call.
The appropriations bill seems like the logical place for this politically. One more lose-lose for the GOP. I suppose, thought, that there’s some hope among Dems that the Iraq forces will be well into withdrawal phase before they bring up DADT so they can blunt some of the screaming that will ensue about “weakening the military in the midst of war”.
Delay Defense appropriations until after election day. There’s money in the pipeline for well over a month.