Monday May 24, 2010
Committee Seeks to Sneak ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal before Pentagon Study Results
By James Tillman
WASHINGTON, DC, May 24, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The Senate Armed Services Committee may vote this week to attach an amendment to the 2011 defense spending bill that would end the armed forces’ “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” (DADT) policy and permit homosexuals to serve openly in the military.
Attaching the repeal to the defense measure would both coerce conservative congressmen to vote for a measure that they might otherwise strongly oppose, and rush the repeal of DADT before a Department of Defense study of the effects of such a policy change was completed.
If the repeal succeeds, it would not be the first time radical homosexualist legislation has slipped through in a defense bill: in 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which had been attached to the 2010 defense authorization bill.
Despite this and many other instances in which he has shown his support for the homosexualist agenda, “gay rights” groups have continued to fault Obama for not acting more aggressively against the military ban.
“This is our ‘all hands on deck’ moment,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the homosexualist Servemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which is dedicated to repealing DADT. “For repeal [of DADT] to succeed, it is critical that all proponents for full repeal weigh in now, including the White House.”
In his January State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress to repeal DADT, saying he would “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.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that he agrees that DADT ought to be repealed, but has also said that he opposes any legislative action before the Department of Defense completes a study of servicemembers’ reactions to a change in the policy. The study would be completed by the end of this year.
Many homosexualist activists hope the repeal of DADT to pass before the 2010 elections, when Democrats are widely expected to lose many seats in Congress.
Such hopes are not unfounded: although the House Armed Services Committee did not attached a similar rider when passing its version of the defense spending measure last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told homosexualist groups that she will allow a floor vote on the issue if there is enough support for repeal.
At an Equality California fund-raising event on Friday, Pelosi said she was “quite certain” DADT “will be a memory come Christmas.”
The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule was instituted by President Clinton in 1993, permitting homosexuals to serve in the military by discouraging investigation into their sexual behavior. Official military code still prohibits those who display homosexual behavior from entering the military; President Clinton’s policy prevented its enforcement.
In March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, changed policy even further so that military code was harder to enforce.
As a report by the Center for Military Readiness (CMR) explains, the new policy states that only a one-star general or admiral has sufficient authority to initiate a fact-finding inquiry involving homosexual conduct. Such measures, says CMR, are effectively “tying the hands of subordinate commanders who are closest to the facts.”
See related stories on LifeSiteNews.com:
Obama Promises ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10012805.html
Rep. Barney Frank: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to Be Repealed
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/nov/09111202.html