"It's important to be honest among friends," he says at 0:24 and then literally puts his tongue in his cheek. He was lying and he knew it. Lying about being honest.
But what damnable luck for the Democrats to have this thrown at them 2 weeks before the election! It's such a bad issue for Obama. He hasn't done what he promised, and he's fought against constitutional rights that he ought to be actively pursuing, whether he'd made promises or not. He's going to have to rest on the argument that he was always all about Congress making the change. But why hasn't his Congress gone his way? And do Democrats in Congress want this issue forefronted now? They've only made everyone unhappy — people who want DADT repealed and people who don't. And then there's the additional issue of "activist" judges.... (Phillips was appointed by President Clinton, who, of course, signed the original Don't Ask Don't Tell statute.)
ADDED: Andrew Sullivan:
So once again, we will have the political prospect of the Obama administration simultaneously legally defending the Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell in court, while politically saying they oppose both...The GOP is convenient, and the Obama and the Democrats have taken advantage of that. I think they are deeply responsible for the failure here. Obama's administration is actively fighting against gay rights.
Yes, the GOP is the main party to blame. But no, this does not excuse the extra-cautious, gays-are-radioactive mindset of the Obama administration...
UPDATE: The Obama administration, continuing its active fight against gay rights, will appeal the decision in the case about the Defense of Marriage Act.
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213 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 213 of 213Dems had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, an enormous majority in the House and a sitting President that promised to do away with DADT.
DADT repeal passed by an enormous majority in the House. The Dems filibuster-proof majority existed only from the moment the Minnesota Supreme Court told Norm Coleman to give up already till the moment Scott Brown won in Massachusetts -- eleven weeks when the scheduled recesses were counted. And suring that time the Congress focused on getting health care reform passed, which benefited millions of Americans instead of thousands.
But Congress will have to have a lame-duck session to pass the budget. DADT repeal -- part of the Defense Appropriations bill passed by the House --goes in then.
FLS - DADT repeal just means that the workaround of the UCMJ that DADT is goes away and the UCMJ comes back into full force.
I wrote about it when Harvard proclaimed that they'd allow ROTC back on campus when DADT dies.
With this, Harvard is allowing ROTC back when the regulations are even stricter than with DADT.
All the DADT opponents forget that DADT made it EASIER, not harder...
wv: preci
jr
you must not be a men.
there are two kinds of (straight) men. men who obviously check women out all the time.
and men who hide it.
i guarantee that the men will check the women out. and if the woman is hot, yep, even have a physical response. rather than denying the reality, how would you confront it?
Chase obviously can't defend his position and he knows it, so all he can do is lose control and scream at the people who disagree with him to shut up.
He's the sort of person who would get all his fellow soldiers killed in battle, and he's telling us who can and can't be in the military!
Pathetic.
FLS - DADT repeal just means that the workaround of the UCMJ that DADT is goes away and the UCMJ comes back into full force.
10 USC 925 would likely need to be amended at the same time.
Kimsch wrote:
With this, Harvard is allowing ROTC back when the regulations are even stricter than with DADT.
All the DADT opponents forget that DADT made it EASIER, not harder...
Right. Way back when DADT was Clinton's answer to allow gays to serve in the military. Now it's the work of bigoted republicans. JFurther, anyone who doens't believe in gays serving completely openly in the military or that overturning DADT isn't the biggest civil rights fight in the mordern world is the equivalent to the the guys who beat up gays at the Stonewall bar in manhattan. No difference between the two.
A.W. wrote:
you must not be a men.
there are two kinds of (straight) men. men who obviously check women out all the time.
and men who hide it.
i guarantee that the men will check the women out. and if the woman is hot, yep, even have a physical response. rather than denying the reality, how would you confront it?
Are gay men not men? Why would they not similarly be aroused around men they find attractive?
There should be a movie about the whole DADT thing called GI Jean or GI Joan (as in Joane Crawford, aka Mommie Dearest) which is very similar to GI Jane, only with a gay dude in the place of Demi Moore's character.
He just wants to fit in and prove himself, but master chief is a sadistic bastard who puts him through his paces and degrades him in countless chauvanistic ways.But GI Joan can't be broken despite all the rough treatment at the hands of the hot masterchief Then after that, they come to a meeting of the minds and act on their latent sexual tension between each other and have hot sex together.
jr565 - It goes further. In addition to the "how does the military deal with intimately mixing together young adults (and attendant hormones), who are attracted to each other", the military will have problems with "Love in the foxhole (LITF)." Heterosexual men, fighting and depending on each other, will sacrifice to save their comrades. But this kind of "love" is not the same as the love between a man and a woman, which can (and many times is) irrational. The Marine 2nd LT, with a combat unit in the field, doesn't have to worry about LITF. The Staff SGT doesn't have to worry about junior enlisted complaining about the 2nd LT is showing favoritism (real or imagined) to the cute blond E-4 (male or female).
Yes, the GOP is the main party to blame
Oh, shove it, Andrew.
The 103rd Congress had a majority of Democrats in both houses.
A Democrat signed the DADT bill into law.
Democrats control both houses now and there's a Democrat in the White House... and the ones in Congress won't introduce a repeal bill.
But somehow the other party is mostly to blame.
(Oh, they put an amendment to do it on a defense appropriations bill, along with a bunch of other ones. And couldn't even get Democrats to not defect away from it.
It's almost like the Democratic Party doesn't care about gays.
And why should it, with decades of people telling them gay people had to vote for Democrats no matter what?
A captive voting bloc has no power.)
(To be fairer to Mr. Sullivan than he deserves, most of the core opposition to DADT is on the Republican side... but legislatively, that doesn't matter.
Democrat majorities passed it, a Democrat signed it, a Democrat majority now won't make a standalone bill to repeal it, and a Democrat President is opposing it.
Talk is cheap as hell, Andrew. Cheap as hell.
Just like convenient partisan shots unrelated to the voting record.)
This whole subject is really not an issue with the older members. They are mature, experienced, and professional enough to overcome any personal misgivings they may have. But the bulk of the military and especially the pointy end of the stick are very young.
The Military seeks to promote aggression and young men naturally deal with uncomfortable or confusing situations with the same. Groups of young men also have a particular kind of bonding not found elsewhere. It, like the Military itself, is aggressive, hierarchical, very competitive, and very conformist. Weak links are tested and excluded. The Other is attacked. If homosexuality is outside the experience of these men then they will react against it. It is innate. Groups of young gay men do the same thing. It is the trait that makes young men dangerous. Turns them into gangs. It is also the exact same trait the Military needs to fight wars.
It is simply insufficient to insist from the comfort of our keyboards and with the hindsight of our experience that the concerns of the same men we put in harms way for our benefit should just accept our preferences over their own objections. You cannot order away the friction that will arise from forcing the issue. You cannot make a man risk his life for someone he does not like or trust.
Can the Military ingrate openly gay men into the ranks? Yes. Absolutely. But it cannot be through fiat. It must be earned as determined by the ranks themselves.
Give the Military the benefit of the doubt. After all, why fight for inclusion into such an institution if it does not already have your trust?
The 103rd Congress had a majority of Democrats in both houses.
A Democrat signed the DADT bill into law.
No, a Democrat signed the Defense Appropriations bill into law. The DADT was an amendment, as is the DADT repeal is.
Have you always been a loser Jason, or is it just recently that your demonstrated hatred for the men and women of the United States military has finally caused you to hide behind such irrational and hateful statements as the ones you're making here?
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