Posted on 11/25/2008 12:44:04 PM PST by pissant
A member of Barack Obamas transition team is denying media reports that the president-elect has decided to delay efforts to repeal Dont Ask, Dont Tell until 2010.
An Obama transition team spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the decision on how to approach repealing Dont Ask, Dont Tell, which prohibits gays from serving openly in the military, would be made after more experts have joined the Obama administration.
These decisions will not be made before the full national security team is in place, the spokesperson said.
The Washington Times reported last week that two people who have advised Obamas transition team said the president-elect will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010 to repeal the Dont Ask, Dont Tell law, which Congress passed in 1993.
Ending the ban was one of Obamas campaign promises, although he said before his election that he would get the military on board with eliminating the law before taking action.
The Times article also quotes Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, saying that he thinks 2009 is about foundation building and reaching consensus and that he has held informal discussions with the Obama transition team on how the administration should proceed with the issue.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, also said repealing Dont Ask, Dont Tell may be further off and told the Blade earlier this month that once Iraq is over, Congress can eliminate the law.
But not everyone familiar with the issue has said that repealing the ban on open service would come later rather than sooner. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor of legislation that would repeal Dont Ask, Dont Tell told CNN earlier this month that the administration would approve of such a bill next year.
The key here is to get bills that pass the House and the Senate, that we can get to President-elect Obama to sign, and I think that we can do that, certainly, the first year of the administration, she said.
Retired Army Col. Stewart Bornhoft, who is gay and a former commander in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said changing the law would require both passion and preparation.
Clearly, the passion for change is there, he said. But it requires proper preparation for the [Defense Department] to declare that they can implement open service successfully.
However, Bornhoft said repealing Dont Ask, Dont Tell should be attainable in the next Congress.
Whether thats the first or second half of that period should be determined by the progress within the Pentagons thinking rather than an arbitrary calendar date, he said.
Heather Sarver, a lesbian and former Russian linguist for the Air Force who was discharged under Dont Ask, Dont Tell in 2003, said she understands the need to build support for legislation repealing the law, but said everyone who cares about this issue should hold specific members of Congress accountable for their support of the bill.
What I fear is that Democrats have stated that they support repealing [the ban] in order to appease their gay constituents and to say they support gay issues without being in support of gay marriage, she said. If they are sincere, then they will schedule meetings with other members of Congress and garner their support for repeal.
Sarver said if lawmakers do not work on building support, their opposition to Dont Ask, Dont Tell in the election will be seen as nothing more than a political chess move.
A Washington Post poll this summer found that 75 percent of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, compared to 45 percent in 1993.
Activists commend Daschle nomination
Meanwhile, AIDS activists praised Obamas nomination of Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary, and predicted Daschles appointment would ramp up efforts in combating the HIV epidemic.
The activists pointed to how Daschle, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota and Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, voted in favor of bills aimed at confronting the spread of HIV through legislation that set up the D.C. needle exchange program.
Daschle also was a national co-chair of ONE Vote 08, a non-partisan campaign that aimed to make global health issues more prominent in the 2008 election, including the international AIDS epidemic.
Carl Schmid, director of federal affairs for the AIDS Institute, noted that Daschle comes from a state that has a low incidence of HIV infections, but said the former senator has always been very supportive of the issues relating to HIV and gay rights.
Daschle would have an extremely important role in confronting the HIV epidemic, Schmid said, because the health and human services secretary oversees agencies relevant to the issue, including the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food & Drug Administration, Medicare and Medicaid.
Schmid, whos gay, said he was still waiting to hear about other appointees who will play key roles in confronting the HIV epidemic, such as undersecretaries who would serve under Daschle, the surgeon general and the AIDS czar.
Hopefully those people will have direct experience in some communities that are highly impacted with the AIDS epidemic, he said.
Sean Strub, an HIV-positive gay man and founder of POZ magazine, said Daschles record on AIDS is excellent and he commended the former senators support of science-based HIV prevention strategies and his interest in empowering and incorporating the consumers voice into the healthcare decision-making processes.
Daschles appointment brings a respect for science, as well as common sense, back to a cabinet office that has in recent years been hijacked by religious ideologues who use healthcare policy as a weapon against their adversaries, he said.
Strub said Daschle is interested in what people with HIV have to say about the epidemic not because it is politically strategic but because he knows that no long-term solutions can be found until and unless we are participants in the process.
Daschles experience in the Senate, Strub said, makes him perfect for actually getting a healthcare plan through Congress. He added that health care is the single most important issue for people with HIV.
Daschles office did not respond this week to the Blades repeated requests for comment.
Good point (smiling wryly) I can hardly wait to see the first ACLU lawsuit on that one. /sarc
If Obama’s coming regime *wants* to encourage desertions and resignations, then they couldn’t come up with a better way to do it than make the military fairy-friendly.
” The marxist thinks DADT applies to his birth certificate.”
BWWAA!!
There is no upside for the military if DADT is repealed.
Obama’s obvious priority is to make the gay community happy,
not to preserve and strengthen the military.
yeah, they'll fix the spelling and make it: Don't aKs instead.
Well, just golly! I’m stunned speechless. The Military thinks as I do. Who knew???
I don’t think it’s a right for gays to serve (although I understand those of them who would like to). I’d like to serve, but now I’m too old and when young enough, I’d never have made the physical part of it. Mentally, however, I can only say, “I get it — all of IT.” I love the strategy. I love the discipline. I LOVE IT!!! I grew up that way. I honestly get it.
No, no it didn’t prove they will fight. I proved they will protest churches that will not fight back. If they truly will fight then they would have been picketing black churches. What did they do? They picked on the Mormons. Let them go down to Wrights church of G-d damn America, and let them raise a little he**. They are cowards and they will protest. Fight? I highly doubt they will fight.
I am not frigging fuming with the homo’s now
first we go though the constitutional amendments, we get all those signatures and did all the hard work and we passed it in FL.
We go though all of this every time everywhere, do the hard work and in the end the homo’s go to a judge who makes laws up and throws out old laws.
As is the case here in FL now where a judge has just ruled that homo’s can adopt thus getting rid of the law which bans them.
this just after their marriage ban.
Now they want homo’s to share showers with soldiers, marines etc.
I am so mad right now with their agenda.
the fact is the majority do not approve of homo or homo sex, they are looked as perverts, sick ,mental problems etc and they think going to judges and activists makes them normal and we’ll just accept them.
I served for years in the military and no way do I or anyone else want a homo next to me unless he is going to take that round instead of me.
For any homo’s out there reading this or trolling
you are disgusting and your agenda is pissing more and more people off.
I swear that the north east should just leave the union and leave us in peace down here from VA to FL to the Midwest to AK plus they take all their homo’s and liberal loons with them.
read my other post above friend
I have just read about a judge stating that the homo ban is not right and thus makes a new law letting homo’s adopt now this just after where we have banned them in FL to get married.
why do we go to all this trouble and they just go and get a judge.
They are making a mockery of this country and the laws of this country.
sick they are sick.
Very true
they only care for themselves and their sick twisted agenda.
they are in our faces all the time and I ma fed up of it and fed up of how they make a mockery of our laws by their liberal judges.
Why can’t they all go up to the north east , VT, etc and live there and just leave us be in peace.
Leave us with a country which goes by the law, where judges do not make laws, where their sick agenda will never be accepted.
mad right now
they want marraige, get kids to adopt, teach in schools, in our military
this is just plain sick and our GOP remains quiet for fear of being called a name
screw that, I don’t care no more what they call me I will not sit idly by with these lot and let them push their agenda and I do not let anyone think they are normal either.
I do not want them,do not want to even know any and I do not want to see any of them down here in FL or the south , midwest etc
I served and I can tell you I will not ever have an homo in my room, or even in my barracks.
If I had not joined and I knew they did serve then I will not enlist
Maybe they will make the homosexual man go take his showers with the girls. There would be no sex temptation there, if we’re saying having naked people in sight who you are sexually attracted to is the problem.
Or have the men’s room, ladies room, and gay bathrooms.
It is an issue to consider, but the gay activists get all pissed off if anybody brings these issues up. The military is not like the rest of society in certain ways, and that’s why gays had been banned in the first place.
I’d like to serve in the military, but now I am too old to do so. Who do I sue?? /sarc
I love FR. Yesterday I wrote back and forth with Esquilax. I went home and pulled my son's study manuals off the shelf and looked up the oaths. I was certain my son's oath was to “protect and defend the Constitution” only. Esquilax said that the oath swore an allegiance to the Constitution, the President, Commanding Officers. Well, much to my surprise (never having been in the military), we were both right. Enlisted take the oath Esquilax referred to, and my son took the oath Officers take.
I shall not continue to refresh my son's education on the Constitution, so he will never ask his men to do something counter to the document that preserves us all. Esquilax I thank you and send my love. Learning everyday.
“I shall not continue to refresh my son’s education on the Constitution, so he will never ask his men to do something counter to the document that preserves us all.”
Um...m, that should have read, “I SHALL CONTINUE...”.
I’m suffering from Thanksgivingitis — still at office with a thousand things to do at home. ;-)
What a recipe for disaster...what if the straight girls are attracted to him? Of course the narcisstic puke would love every minute of it.
If DADT is repealed, then let them have their "gay units," give them their "identifying rainbow patches" and send them out on the worst duty ever. They want to be treated special? No problem.
IMHO this is just another way God is pitting one liberal group's interests against another. They are all trying so hard to hold it together, but the truth is the liberal system is collapsing all around them.
Son and I had a talk about it this morning before we left for work (so it was a short talk), but he managed to sum up succinctly the Marines’ position on the subject and why homosexuals cannot serve. It wasn’t preachy, it wasn’t based on personal feelings, it was a simple and direct, “to maintain order and discipline” among the ranks sort of response — no emotion.
You know, I’m starting to “enjoy” hearing him talk again. It’s not as cute as the stuff he used to say at 2 or 3, but it’s certainly as gratifying and infinitely more comforting. It was the years from 11 to 19 that damn-near did me in. ;-)
Given that military life stresses teamwork as opposed to individuality, this is ungodly political correctness being shoved down the throats of the military.
An irritating prick.
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