Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
“Today marks the end of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” The law is repealed. From this day forward, gay and lesbian soldiers may serve in our Army with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
- Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, et al
In December 2010, President Barack Obama signed the law repealing DADT. Today it is reality. After 17 years, DADT is history.
Watch the video from BarackObama.com:
DADT – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – will not be remembered fondly by anyone but bigots. Obviously, people like Bob Maginnis and others at the Family Research Council will miss it. Maginnis claimed back in December that a half-million servicemen and women would quit if DADT was repealed. He also said repealing it made America “no better than Sodom and Gomorrah.” According to Maginnis, continuing a long tradition of fundamentalist Christian anal fixation, Obama “sodomized” the military!
And that’s not all. As Right Wing Watch reported at the time,
Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver demanded that the House GOP “defund any implementation of this law” and states pass laws banning gays from serving openly in their state’s National Guard, and Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily called for service members to leave over the policy and “let the politicians cobble together a military of social deviants if they think they can.”
Virginia Republican legislator Bob Marshall (R-Prince William) claimed repeal of DADT would bring about a reinstitution of the draft. Worse, Republicans threatened to scuttle the START treaty if DADT was approved. In other words, a childish “if we can persecute gays and lesbians, we’re going to put as all at increased risk by nuclear annihilation.” Kind of a home-made Sodom and Gomorrah scenario.
As might be expected, it did not go quietly into the night. House Republicans Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) of the House Armed Services Committee wrote Defense Secretary Leon Panetta seeking to delay implementation:
“Since it is evident that the department does not have final, approved policies in place, we believe it is essential that you take immediate action to delay the implementation of repeal until such time that the review and comment period is completed, that DOD has incorporated the changes suggested during the comment period and that the appropriate regulations needed to implement repeal have been distributed to and are understood by the leaders and key personnel in the field.”
In a letter sent to soldiers yesterday, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odiermo wrote,
Today marks the end of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” The law is repealed. From this day forward, gay and lesbian Soldiers may serve in our Army with the dignity and respect they deserve. Our rules, regulations and politics reflect the repeal guidance issued by the Department of Defense and will apply uniformly without regard to sexual orientation, which is a personal and private matter.
For over 236 years, the U.S. Army has been an extraordinary force for good in the world. Our Soldiers are the most agile, adaptable and capable warriors in history — and we are ready for this change…
Accordingly, we expect all personnel to follow our Values by implementing the repeal fully, fairly and in accordance with policy guidance. It is the duty of all personnel to treat each other with dignity and respect, while maintaining good order and discipline throughout our ranks. Doing so, will help the U.S. Army remain the Strength of the Nation.
According to Equality Florida,
Since the passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993, approximately 14,000 American soldiers’ lives have been turned up-side-down as they were removed from serving their country simply for being lesbian, gay or bisexual. Tens of thousands more were forced to live a lie just to keep their jobs.
And they fought and died for their country just like their heterosexual counterparts. Just as they have throughout history.
But let’s not become complacent. As Human Rights Campaign points out, ridding ourselves of DADT does not grant equality to gay and lesbian military personnel:
The irony of McKeon and Wilson’s inquiry into benefit changes is that, unfortunately, gay and lesbian service members still will lack access to a wide array of benefits available to straight service members and their loved ones. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits the military from extending a number of benefits to the spouses of gay and lesbian service members, such as health insurance benefits. Other limitations include regulations related to military family housing, access to legal services, spousal relocation support and an adequate infrastructure to process incidents of discrimination and harassment against gay and lesbian service members.
The fight is not over, of course, not as long as Christian fundamentalism has any clout at all. Fundamentalists fought tooth and nail to stop repeal of DADT. As recently as this month the Family Research Council has encouraged servicemen and women to express their opposition to the gay troops in their midst for “flaunting their sexuality”. They came out in support of a bill by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) to protect the free speech of soldiers to openly condemn their comrades for being different from them. Fundamentalism doesn’t like to lose and it never loses gracefully, as history has demonstrated again and again.
As of this morning, America’s defenses have not collapses and the U.S. Army has not resigned en masse. God has not struck us down in a fiery recreation of Sodom and Gomorrah and none of those things are likely to happen tomorrow, or the day after. The only difference between today and yesterday is that today, more people are free of persecution; more people are having their constitutional rights to equality before the law enforced. And America is a better place for it, and a stronger place.
PoliticusUSA
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FreeRangeRadical
Sep. 20th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
People forget that prior to DADT, it was simply illegal to be gay and be in the US military. When I served, our battalion commander, Buford W Tuton III (the name says it all), initiated a witch hunt to eliminate gays, lesbians and atheists. Since I fall into 2 of those 3 categories, I was high on his list to discharge. Luckily, I was at the end of my term of service, so I left voluntarily, but he tried to KEEP me in so that he could have a courts martial and send me to Mannheim, the US Federal holding barracks in Mannheim, Germany. He made it very clear what he wished to do, which worked in my favor. So I had to enlist the aid of the then-Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, D-GA, in order to get out without being jailed…for simply being gay. Tuton had gone to great lengths to carry out his witch hunt, using two junior enlisted men to seduce soldiers of rank in order to prosecute and discharge them. Just after I left the unit and the Army, Congress sent a delegation to Augsburg to find out why Tuton had the lowest re-enlistment rate…not just in Europe…not just in the Army…but in the entire US military. And since we were an Intelligence battalion, US taxpayers had spent MILLIONS of dollars training each one of us, sending us to language school for a year or more, as well as lengthy and entailed technical training. He lost his command, but in an upside-down turn of events, went on to get his full bird (the rank of colonel). It was at that time (the late 80s, early 90s) that Fundamentalist Christians were infiltrating the military…all branches…in order to create what they thought of as God’s Army. And that always made me wonder…if their god is so powerful…why does he need an army?
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Shiva (Moderator)
Sep. 20th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
if this God of theirs needs a military, then I would have to say he really isn’t very all that powerful
either that or the military they need is not forgot after all but for their own power
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Shiva (Moderator)
Sep. 20th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
the people who claim this will destroy our Army or military, are not giving any credit to the people who serve within our Armed Forces. They are literally treating them like they’re kindergarten people.
There are all kinds of people in our military. One of the groups in the military are gang members. Every year millions of dollars of weaponry is stolen by these people and put out on the streets. I do not see anyone trying to stop this. We have people who drink heavily, we have people who are rigid Christians, we have gay people, we have people from every walk of life. And prior to the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell the military functioned as it should.
it’s not as if the people in the military don’t know who was gay and who isn’t. I would say that most of us in the United States who have ever had a job and work closely with people for a period of time know what they are, whether they are drunks, drug use, gay, nice people or bad people. all of the things that the Republicans are saying simply says that our military people are not qualified to deal with the people that they work with when they have been doing it all along.
But did anyone suspect that the Republicans would tell the truth about this especially when the military itself thinks that don’t ask don’t tell is useless? I know if I worked in a factory today and there was a don’t ask don’t tell policy, everyone would know who was gay and who isn’t and wouldn’t treat them any differently. You always have some individuals who cannot drop their hate in any group whether it be military or a business but those people are not a majority and soon pay the price. The Republicans are part of that group the cannot drop their hate and so are the Christian fundamentalists who try to talk and act like they know anything about our military
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Brown cow
Sep. 20th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Free Range Radical. I was proud to read that former Senator Sam Nunn helped you out. He is from my hometown, in fact, my sister used to babysit his children. My father has always thought the world of Mr. Nunn. I wish there were more Georgians like him.
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Kate
Sep. 20th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Seems to me like the ones claiming that this will destroy our military (and in turn, our country) are still stuck in the mindset that accidentally seeing another boy’s winkie in the locker room showers is unforgivably embarrassing.
Yeesh.
Any military man worth his salt will tell you that he doesn’t give even a quarter of a damn if Tommy is gay, as long as Tommy’s guarding his back in the heat of battle. They plain don’t care! They have an inkling of who is and isn’t gay…come on, they talk amongst themselves, they’re good at reading body language…our boys in uniform aren’t dunces! And they’re smart enough to realize that during battle, that’s exactly where your mind belongs: in the battle, not in your neighbor’s pants, figuring out if he goes full mast at the ladies or the lads.
Those who are so insecure with the sexuality of others, even in the midst of combat and chaos, do not deserve a place in our armed forces. Anyone who lets those thoughts distract them from duty should kindly GTFO and leave the job to someone more capable.
And how many of them are active members of the military, by the way? Anyone worried about Tommy looking at Timmy’s crotch during combat, you done your duty to your country lately? You seen what our boys go through? *cricket chirp* Right, that’s what I thought. And yet you forced the military to uphold your absurd little dictates as law.
Sounds like a massive case of penis insecurity, if you ask me. Just a bunch of bitter old men angry that some studly young man in uniform might be with another man, and that the sex those men are getting is better than that the old men get from their bitter, tired old wives.
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maxine
Sep. 27th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Now if they would please stop treating women like outsiders by lifting the “Combat Exclusion Policy.” It doesn’t stop women from being killed in combat, it just shafts them when it comes to being able to help their fellow soldiers fight.
Oh. All those ‘he-men’ terrified of being ogled or propositioned? That female soldier next to you puts up with it from you without freaking. Show a little dignity and stop having the vapors.
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Shasta
Sep. 21st, 2011 at 7:06 am
HBO documentary “Strange History of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-strange-history-of-dont-ask-dont-tell/index.html
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