Because They Can?
This gives a whole new meaning to "Yes, We Can".
Obama's Justice Department plans to appeal yesterday's federal court injunction on DADT.
The Administration will also appeal Boston district judge Joseph Tauro's ruling that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
Of course, the irony of the DADT decision is that it was the Log Cabin Republicans who brought the suit. And in this day and age when even Ann Coulter is an out and proud fag hag, Obama's wonky insistence on going forward on the principle that his administration is obligated to do so just rings false.
"The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged," is the official line. No one is arguing the DOJ is obligated, mind you. Such a strident insistence on tradition from a character who promised principled change is oddly jarring.
So why would Obama challenge progress on this front?
Apparently because he can.
The only saving grace to this farce of Obama's -- claiming to be for gay rights, claiming to want to strike down DADT and then legally supporting it -- is that all dismissals are apparently FINALLY to be suspended for the duration of whatever it takes to actually kill the thing. And that, given Obama's vacillations, could be a very long time.
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I must say with some regret that I seriously doubt the civilian GLBT community "gets" this issue. Military service does not equate to a civilian job. Once in, you don't have the expectation of certain taken-for-granted "rights" like criticizing the government, electioneering, taking a mental health day, etc. Unless he or she has served/is serving, I've yet to meet a gay person who understands these areas, and agrees with them. The UCMJ exists for a reason, even if it needs 21st-century updating. It's no evil if the DOD Report takes until this December: where's the hurry with this judge? Two things the Military is excellent at need to be set in place: service members need proper training to deal with the new regs, and officers need to be on board to support the change from the top down. Then none can say he/she wasn't told, there wasn't enough time, this is what happens when you let those kind of persons out of the closet...ad nauseam. Even more important is there be some institutional mechanism to support those service members who actually want to be open (and not everyone will in spite of what some think). We do not want the deaths of Barry Winchell at Ft. Campbell and August Provost at Camp Pendleton to recur.
Obama is correct: he can't write away DADT with his pen. Only Congress can change the regulation: this little check-and-balance nicety is precisely what our community doesn't get. An unfortunate result of too few civic classes and a generation of gays resting on the laurels of their older brothers/sisters who actually fought for what rights we do have in the U.S. I'm ruefully glad that the Prop. 8 gay marriage debacle in California seems to have been a good corrective for some younger gays. And we seem to lack interest in the military as a community- though who can blame us? Still, my sympathy is not always with some recent self-outed service members: one, they already know this is a volunteer military, and, two, they should know homosexuality has been a hard sell in the military lately. Too many of them appear to want their 5 minutes of glory basking. Sometimes you have to shut up to get along.
BTW, I do support "open", or rather sexual orientation-blind, service in our military. A principle honored more in the breech is that the U.S. Military always is a microcosm of U.S. society, and we gays should be there too (and we are, Blanche, we already are). Besides, if our Allies can do it, why can't we? I'm just saying we in the civilian GLBT community should offer some proof of our own commitment, respect, and understanding before we take the privilege. 'Cause it's not always apparent we even care.
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Well, I respectfully disagree with you.
I grew up in a multi-generational military family. I was born on a military base. I have siblings and cousins I grew up with in all branches of the service. (This does not equate to "some of my best friends are [fill in the blank]" -- anyone who grows up in a military family has some intimate knowledge of the psychology of the military.)
Aside from the appalling irony of appealing to the UCMJ in a case where the system singles out a class of people for special treatment, it just seems you are buying in a little to the whole bizarre "shower hypothesis" of opponents of repealing DADT. That repeal will mean servicemen and women are popping out of the closet and "forcing their sexuality" on straight service members is a version of the insidious Other of the Red Scare.
All that will change with the repeal is the witch hunt that has resulted in the discharge of almost 14,000 service members, very few of whom were the Lt. Dan Choi types who went on to publicly speak out (and I totally respect Choi for doing so), will end. The repeal does not mandate asking or telling.
Here are a couple of the cases that spawned Judge Virginia A. Phillips' opinion that DADT has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services:
These men were not "criticizing the government, electioneering, taking a mental health day, etc." They were doing their jobs, and minding their own business. Under DADT you can't do that and be gay.
Uphold the injunction and end the ban. It is wrong. And as Judge Phillips says, it has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.
I understand your logic in invoking Barry Winchell (whose murder was felt to be partly attributable to the climate fostered by DADT -- the incident was the basis of an excellent film, Soldier's Girl) and August Provost (who did not report being stalked because of fear that it would lead to his discharge under DADT, and was later bound and gagged, shot in the head three times, and set on fire). But to think that provisions for, let's call it de-implementation of DADT aren't well in the works behind the scenes seems a tad naive. It essentially means a return to the UCMJ for all troops, and equal treatment without exception.
I don't have much faith myself in the legislative process here, and I do think Obama is playing politics with GLBT issues. And it is not by any stretch of the imagination unprecedented for the President to decline to challenge a judicial decision like this (Clinton) or to override the legislative process altogether in the name of Civil Rights (Truman's Executive Order 9981, which in practice was formally implemented three years later, in a time of war, no less).
You don't have to be gay to to support the repeal of DADT. Over 70% of Iraq and Afghanistan War vets do. The military folks I know (and I knew quite a few) know what's right. Enough is enough. They're ready.
Here, again, is the list of nations whose armies allow gays to serve as openly as they want to be, and a partial list of those that don't.
Nations that allow gays to serve:
A rogues' gallery of nations that don't:
The US is with the "Axis of Evil" here.
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As A Reader for a few years, I have an impression many of your readers are in the Hub area, and that you are acquainted with some of them. So I appreciate your interaction with one who lives on the Other Coast and whom you don't know.
I feel you come down a bit hard on my comment about the UCMJ. While not "appealing to" the Code to support DADT at all, I merely wished to indicate that the Regs do not always make any sense to civilians...but they are contextual in the Military. Even if it is patently ridiculous that prohibitions against oral sex and sodomy are actionable against heterosexual spouses (and I don't mean rape cases in or out of wedlock).
I also was speaking only of the civilian gay population. As a corollary, you epitomize my point that most civilian gays have little to add of a cogent nature to this debate. I mean to say, you DO understand because of your special background. You DO have something to bring to the discussion. Yet you are, I think, in the minority. I've been to Log Cabin, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, and American Veterans for Equal Rights events on DADT and GLBT persons in the U.S. Military in general. My own experience there allows me to say, if you haven't been in, or don't have a close friend or family member in, then you really don't know. At the same time American society has become somewhat removed from our Military, especially the part that is urban and well-situated (which many gays are). So with our volunteer service it seems to be less likely that we know or come in contact with service members.
And I certainly agree with your other points.
Except one. This "showering" thing. In the interest of disclosing bias, I should say my partner was in the Military for 20 years. We met when he still had five to go. And I visited him on base in his own room, which had a full bath attached. So many of my comments on DADT and gays in the military come from him. Showers are a red herring because, except for Basic Training where there can be open bays and shower facilities, other living situations are dormitory style with, if not en-suite bathrooms, then with stalls present.
So you see, my own understanding is an intimate one....
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Bryan,
I appreciate your reading, and that you always have something interesting and informed to say.
I guess I don't disagree that gays, many of whom have gotten what knowledge of the military they have from porn, don't all really "get" the military, but I do think that repealing DADT has become a major issue again partly because gays are more visible in positive (or normative) roles in society. Because more straight people know gay people (instead of getting their knowledge of us from porn), they are coming to see us as people, not as the sex-crazed stereotypes we actually are. So, even though civilian gays may not fully "get" it, their reasoned appeal on issues of fairness and equality have brought the repeal process to a point where it's viable.
With the "shower" comment, I did not mean you had fallen for the shower canard so much as seem to in some way fall into the "shower logic", the litany of scare tactics used to perpetuate a policy which itself has been more damaging to the military in wartime than its repeal would be. If we were the very first military to allow gays to serve I could see the excessive caution in proceeding, but the truth is most of our allies -- even Estonia for chrissakes -- have managed to make it happen with very little fuss. The US Military can do this; it's the politicians who want to prolong it for their own purposes. (This is the first election in nearly two decades without a gay marriage referendum on some state's ballot -- but anti-gay rhetoric is still a reliable fall-back in tight races.)
The details may take some time to work out (although the easiest solution would be to treat the sexuality of gays the same way we treat the sexuality of straights on the job: as a personal matter that should not impact their professionalism -- and if it does they should suffer the same consequences) but that's no excuse for ceasing to enforce DADT right now.
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