Another yeson8won type. Different name.

In fact, the national office holders have, in the past, over-ridden initiatives passed by the electorate of Washington, DC.

Hard to tell sometimes . I suppose we need some sort of ironic emoticon, but that would kind of take the fun out of it.

And regarding the cannon fodder argument, you may be right.

I was kidding, but I wouldn’t put it past them to view us as expendable cannon fodder. Which, if DADT is repealed and more gays join the military, they have a chance of becoming on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In WHAT almost parallel universe in which Life is fair and Justice is truly “blind”? That sounds like an episode of “Fringe” in which the Obamas have moved into the “new” White House and, in New York, the Twin Towers still stand.

They are not SUPPOSED to rule on an issue not in front of the court but they can and some do.

If decisions were always made solely on the “merits” of the case and the Constitution, Dred Scott would have been set free, slavery outlawed years earlier, and, because Scriptural defenses of antigay laws would never have fallen from any judge’s lips declaring very similarly that “due process, equal treatment, privacy, free expession do not apply to homosexuals” because the government has a “compelling interest” that overrides such considerationsc no DADT would have been passed by Congress because the Supreme Court would have outlawed banning gays from the military as early as 1980 in “Matlovich v. Secretary of the Air Force.” [As it were, it never went that far.]

In dismissing “Beller,” then 9th Circuit Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “While it is clear tht one does not surrender his or her constitutional rights upon entering the military, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that constitutional rights must be viewed in light of the special circumstances and needs of the armed forces.”

Since becoming a Supreme, he wrote two major gay positive decisions: overturning Colorado’s antigay law and overturning sodomy laws nationwide. However, he voted with those justices who sided with the homohating Boy Scouts oligarchy.

The loathsome Bork fortunately was rejected as a Supreme but wrecked religiously driven ideological damage in the lower courts generally and military cases specifically. In dismissing “Dronenberg” along with his then Appelate co-fascist Scalia, he declared that “legislation may implement morality.”

Right, and it has nothing to do with empathy on the part of lgbt people and allies. These people you’re referring to aren’t fred phelps and his clan.

I know there are some who will never change, but I think there is a larger contingent who will.

That’s your faith. THe only way that bigots change is by having their views stigmatized and isolated. And that, only outward expression. It is far more useful to work to have those views stigmatized than empathize.

In order to challenge their beliefs it is important to understand what they believe and why.

This is pablum. There’s no challenging the dogma of a fundamentalist. YOu’ve never met one, I assure you.

If we just dismiss them as evil brainwashed lunatics whom we must defeat, then our arguments against them will be about as relevant and effective as arguing abstinence for STD prevention.

No, actually our arguments will be pretty good even if we dismiss them as evil brainwashed lunatics. NOM doesn’t have a lot of traction, and it’s not like any lgbt leaders are taking the leadership to task in the public square. Now you can get bogged down in the word game of scripture and whatever. That’s your prerogative, not mine. I think it’s a tremendous waste of time. Empathizing with a bigot will lend the bigot’s opinion more credibility than they’re worth…Richard Dawkins told that to stephen jay gould when gould was confronted by the fendamentalists. I don’t think you really understand social trends or the real reason behind some of the religious’s change of heart–religion has evolved like every other social institution…and everything else…throughout history…it’s an organic process like anything else. It changes its tenets with social pressure.

As I said, it is difficult work to actually sit down and challenge someone whom you’d rather throttle, but some people have to do that work.

As I said, you’ve clearly never met a fundamentalist. You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t reason with unreasonable people; it’s a waste of effort and actually supports, indirectly, their position. That’s what soul force does, in my view…they are complicit in promoting, though indirectly, the legitimacy of the views which are used to uphold oppression and discrimination while achieving absolutely no headway in advancing lgbt equality amongst the fundamentalists.

I know there are some who will never change, but I think there is a larger contingent who will. In order to challenge their beliefs it is important to understand what they believe and why.

If we just dismiss them as evil brainwashed lunatics whom we must defeat, then our arguments against them will be about as relevant and effective as arguing abstinence for STD prevention.

As I said, it is difficult work to actually sit down and challenge someone whom you’d rather throttle, but some people have to do that work.

No, it’s not important to understand why opponents hold their beliefs (sexism, religion) if you can’t change them. It’s a waste of time and resources to try to “empathize” in this manner. You can easily refute their claims without knowing why they’re bigots.

Well, that’s true. There’s no reasoning with zealots, either.

With respect, you’re still imagining that a majority of the Supremes would objectively rule on the legal arguments and not on what they believe in DADT the military wants and in DOMA what “society” wants.

13 years of DOMA case failures and 34 years of military ban case failures, unfortunately, prove you wrong.

I have met Major Witt, the plaintiff in the most recent DADT suit, and she is a kind and courageous woman whose determination to advance as much case law as she can while subjecting herself to public scrutiny I applaud. She may well end up reinstated at some level below the Supreme Court and allowed to serve through retirement as Keith Meinhold, Grethe Cammermeyer, and Zoe Dunning were before her. Perry Watkins chose not to return to active duty even after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Army to permit his readmission and the Supreme Court chose not to hear their appeal. Because none of these cases ruled definitively on the ban itself, nothing beyond their individual lives changed.

Again, without a change in ideological balance on the Supreme Court, lower courts can rule a hundred different ways against the law but as long as the Obama administration is defending it the Court will rule the law Constitutional.

No. Most “Jeebus-freaks” don’t want us killed; it means the opposite.

A clear majority of people in all those categories support us in wanting to repeal DADT. In the past five years the number of people wanting to repeal has grown by between 3 and 12 percent.

In fact, the change in the number of people now supporting us has been strongest among Jeebus-freaks and conservatives.

I simply think it helps our cause to be aware of the truth, and understand why our opponents hold their beliefs.

And I believe that we can’t resolve this without sitting down and talking with at least some of them.

But I understand and accept that you see this differently.

I’m not saying give that we should try to validate their point, nor that we should be polite and not get in their faces about it.

But if we see them as caricature then our response to them is going to be equally wooden, and less effective.

Also, when we are talking about public figures it is one thing, but when it is our neighbours and co-workers people are more complex than simply one prejudice.

It is harder to just demonize a person when you see him or her every day, and like it or not most of these issues don’t get resolved without someone people having to sit down and hash out difficult issues.

And there is also the fact that some, not all, people learn and change.

I don’t know about you, but I know people with whom I disagree severely on political and social issues, even racists and homophobes, whom I would consider in some things more trustworthy than some members of my own community who I have met in here.

Again, that doesn’t mean I haven’t confronted these people on their beliefs; it’s just that none of us can be reduced to one single belief.

But I do hear you, and I can certainly understand that your approach on this might be different than mine. We wouldn’t be that effective if we all did everything exactly the same, either.

The DOMA clause three case is novel because it attacks under the 5th rather than 14th Amendment, which are similar in that they address equal protection, but the 5th addresses federal rather than state. It has the significance of allowing a trial case that will move the ball forward without having a test case that will destroy near future rulings in other regards under the 14th Amendment.

I mean that it sure helps to understand why they believe what they believe – especially if we have a strong disagreement with them.

It’s difficult, but I think it is important to realize that even though some of them do horrible things and have horrible beliefs they are human beings.

To simply dismiss their motivation as “doing God’s will” is to turn these people into caricatures. Most of them are a lot more complex than that, and have real concerns and fears, however unreasonable.

I’m not saying that we have to do their work for them, but I think if we remember that many of them are not just zombies there are a many of them who will meet us part way.

“just a couple of years to see how other cases such as DOMA Claus 3 and DADT are decidec by the courts.”

Weighing in late, while thrilled with the poll results, based on my direct knowledge through my late friend Leonard Matlovich, the first to challenge the military ban on gays [in its original form pre-DADT, I must disagree.

I'm far less familiar with legal challenges to DOMA, but have lost count of the number of times lower courts have upheld it and the Supreme Court has always denied certiori.

Because the basic military gay ban is so much older, there are even more instances in which courts have upheld it and its deformed child DADT.

There have been a handful of instances in which courts [after roughly 3-7 years of litigation] have reinstated individuals WITHOUT overturning the policy/law [for only the Supremes could do that] but with, currently, on average just under 700 discharged a year that’s no strategy even if everyone of them were to sue and only a microscopic number ever do.

While the Supremes do change their minds, of course, or rather their makeup changes enough to leverage a reversal, at least re DADT I am regretfully confidant that the Supremes [until such time as enough conservative justices are replaced by liberals] will continue their record of denying Constitutional obviousness in favor of what the military wants particularly given the mindnumbing and shameful fact that the Obama administration has chosen to actively defend DADT before those all courts itself.

Agreed…
Any real struggle means a lot of hard work, sacrifice and patience – and most difficult of all putting one’s self in the enemy’s shoes.

And as for not seeing one’s self as a minority, I can see why that might be an embarrassing realization, and that many would rather just say “I’m not one of those”.

On another front, for all we talk about international equality and social justice, most of us could not even begin to make the changes in our lives to start righting some of the wrongs our bloated society is responsible for.

Blaming it all on George Bush is sheer hypocrisy, IMO

…and of course there is taking that fight out of the streets and into the courts, where the real decision for our rights should properly be made, IMO.

About re-learning past lessons – I agree.

Also, I think there is a mistaken assumption that positive necessarily comes from the extremes of the political spectrum.

I can think of many cases where progressive policy comes not in a hot political climate with hard right and left factions, but from the centre, when a society is less concerned about fighting.

I know that may not seem like relevant advice when you are in a situation where you are actually forced to fight hard for your rights, but I think it is good to remember that such an adversarial climate is not a healthy state of affairs, nor is it the best way to move foreward.

In particular, I think it is important for would-be revolutionaries to remember. Cooperation and compromise may not be as sexy as marches and barricades, but it is a better way to accomplish our goals, if we can find that common ground with our opponents.

Another problem is that much of our news is spot pieces – crime, stats, polls – but very little or nothing in the way of analysis.

I certainly agree that a lot of stories are off limits, but much of it is simply not making the connections as to why things happen. The people are kept so busy reacting to crime, scandal and hollywood that most people do not even think about putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

And as I said, I think TV news, in particular TV in our legislatures, is making our politicians go for five-second sound bites rather than the reasoned analysis that many issues deserve. They also focus more on scoring points against opponents than on solving problems.

And you mentioned faith (non-religious, I know). I think all our societies have myths and illusions that constrain us. Looking in from the outside I think religion is a big one for the U.S. I don’t know of any other developed country that is so dominated by religion as yours.
It’s not that we aren’t religious up here, it’s just that it doesn’t mix well with politics. No politician up here would be photographed going to church, and even our PM, who is an evangelical, stopped saying “God Bless Canada” when he realized he was creeping people out. I have spent some time in England, Germany and France, and there is nothing like the religious climate in the U.S. either.

We certainly have our own illusions (like all societies, I think) and I’m not saying we are any better than the U.S., but I think these common myths are like a set of blinders – very much like the acceptable left-right constraints you speak about.

SLDN: get out of the way.

“we did not want to beat them more than the right wanted to defeat us”…absofuckinglutely.

My fear is that too many of the “new” movement, particularly the younger portion, have no perspective of what has been tried before and worked [rarely] or failed [usually]. The passion in self-righteousness is still too often confused with power and certainty of success.

But, yes, “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land and don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly agin’…Come Senators, Congressmen, throughout the land…There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’. It’ll soon [hopefully] shake your windows and rattle your walls….”

I actually have no idea what i think about the Servicemen’s actions. Really, I am not saying anything new. I am just trying to get gays, who typically live in our own bubble to get away from the pain of being a minority, to understand our predicament in context of the larger dysfunctional society.

I mean Rove was right- America is a faith based society, but it was not religion to which he was referring. He was referring to how we are trapped by our mutually exclusive perspectives. It’s ironic because we were suppose to be the great experiment that escapes this sort of entrenchment that one found in Europe. In the end, when someone writes the last chapter of our society, I think they will say nice experiment, but really just a re-invention of the same wheel (problem) that plagued man for ever.

I first truly became aware of the problems of how debates are framed to control content of what is the “acceptable” in 2004 when Jon Stewart so expertly took down Teg Koeple on that issue on Nightline when he pointed out that Koeple’s version of “reporting” favors the liar rather than truth since it approaches journalism and he said-he said rather than trying to discern any underlying factual truth of the matter.

I think what you ae discussing is the Overton window-which I believe in a lot:

* Unthinkable
* Radical
* Acceptable
* Sensible
* Popular
* Policy

What is acceptable conversation in America has to go through this process from unthinkable to policy. We see this with gay rights from marriage being impossible in 2004 to being reality now.

I am reminded of how this plays out in other ways, such as the recent piece in the New Yorker about how David beats Goliath, Why Underdogs break the rules:

http://www.newyorker.com/repor.....t_gladwell

Or as Paul Wellstone used to say (an Al Franken now repeats): The way you win is that you got to want it more than the other guy. That’s at the core of the gay predicament. Until last fall, we did not want to beat them more than the right wanted to defeat us. We let them define us. We let them attack us like we were dogs. And then something happened.

And then, something inside shifted like Stonewall- a kind of tipping point. I don’t think the politicians have caught onto that yet. I don’t k now if its even real. I was surprised by some of my friends reaction to Prop 8. These are people who were preaching about the evils of marriage to me weeks before. So to hear them so emotional about the issue, and to see apolitical friends develop a political interest- was shocking. I don’t know if this will continue, but suspect the politicians do not yet know it even exists. But then, that’s true of a lot of what’s going on.

We don’t exactly disagree. Fact vs. perception vs. self-serving motivation behind doors few of us will ever go through. Absolutely. And I agree the greater leverage the ones closest to the President have is the ultimate obstacle. But I also believe that if outsiders can unite to cause ENOUGH noise they can drown out those First Ear whisperers. SLDN is, as it were, aiding and abetting the enemy.

The current edition of former White House aide “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on PBS has an interesting relevant discussion…how “reality,” “what is important” is framed by the media generally and policial spin meisters specifically. He begins with NBC’s Brian Williams:

“BILL MOYERS: Meanwhile, NBC news this week delivered a candygram to the president – two prime time specials called “Inside the Obama White House.” President Obama couldn’t have asked for a sweeter salute…

BRIAN WILLIAMS: People react strongly to this president. We’ve seen people moved to tears after just the briefest encounter with him.

BILL MOYERS: As for an exclusive revelation about your government from behind the White House’s closed doors, well, hold your breath, here it comes…

BRIAN WILLIAMS: There are apples everywhere. Orchards worth of them in bowls throughout the building. They are meant of course to promote healthy eating but what we saw more often is this: the West Wing may lead the western world in candy consumption.

WHITE HOUSE STAFFER: These are official White House M&Ms.

BILL MOYERS: Now, I’ve been there, done that and got the tie clip. I can tell you this is the kind of Valentine every White House press secretary yearns to hand the boss. And it’s not all that hard to achieve, because many of our watchdogs are as housebroken as Bo the White House puppy…”

He, and his guests, go on to dissect the Right’s deceit meisters, too, and how the media empowers them.

“BROOKE GLADSTONE: What I see is that there’s a desperate need on the part of media all the time, and increasingly year after year, to respond to what they think are the concerns of the news consumer. And so, there’s a tendency to bend over backwards to prove they aren’t liberal. This is a canard that began with the Nixon administration, probably before, but really took off steam then. And they’re continually in an acrobatic position, trying to overbalance, show what they think are both sides, a side that isn’t being expressed by a mainstream media that is perceived to be liberal, or they believe it’s perceived to be liberal.

JAY ROSEN: …And I think this involves one of the subtler things that journalists do in our public life, Bill. Which is they set the terms of what a legitimate debate is. They marginalize certain people as not a part of it. And they include other people, who perhaps ought to be marginalized as a central part of it. And it’s very hard for us to hold them accountable for those decisions, because they are subtler than we sometimes recognize.”

They even dare attack the idea that the spectrum of ideas only spans, for example, Gingrich on the Right & Obama on the left…and recognize that there ARE people with positions to the left of Obama…though they don’t mention that those include people who think his position on marriage equality and his inertia on other LGBT rights issues are more Right than Left.

Which brings us back to the issue of a stop-loss order [and, to a lesser degree, marriage equality....except for Brian Willian's softball question to Obama]. More than ever, the mainstream media are focusing on, sometimes even taking, and taking agressively, what’s been perceived as the “liberal” position on DADT….and the great news is that this poll will give cover to them and those yet to weigh in.

Support for gay integration of the military is now a mainstream issue….making it harder and harder for those in the White House and Congress to continue to ignore, even pretend we don’t exist. Yesterday, Obama was at Buchenwald. Did he mention the gays that died there, too? I’m sure he never mentioned the gays that died at Normandy when he was there today.

The Moyers’ show [which also has a chilling discussion of how long and how much the government REALLY expects to be in the Mideast] can be accessed by video and transcript at:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour.....file2.html

Rather than “that they will be stepping on toes,” could it also be that the leaders of SLDN can’t admit that THEIR approach has failed for 16 years so they just keep pushing variations of it? [The most ludicrous angle is that SLDN's cofounder, who is also against a freeze, has been writing a book on how to win in Washington...even tho he only lost for 14 years.]

And which toes? The latest defense of their “DON’T FREEZE DISCHARGES, MR. PRESIDENT…FORM A COMMITTEE THAT HAS TO GET BACK TO YOU IN FOUR MONTHS” message came yesterday in response to questions from the “Washington Blade” about HRC now calling for a freeze.

There has been ongoing competition between SLDN and HRC over DADT turf for a few years now. HRC, not SLDN, funded the speaking tour of gay Iraqi vets to lobby voters to support repeal. [And one assumes those vets first approached the most obvious organization, SLDN, and were turned down for their first, longer speaking tour the year before, which they ended up raising money for themselves.]

It’s only a matter of time before NGLTF which has been mirroring HRC’s previous party line that “Everything Is Beautiful in Obamaland” is forced to join, as HRC has, the call reverberating across the gay and straight mainstream media world for a freeze while lobbyists continue to work for repeal.

At that point, the egg now on SLDN’s face will become a souffle.

Likewise the belief that they shouldn’t do anything to impede the free market when in fact much of your government involves corporate welfare doled out by a corporate oligarchy.

Our government is no different, but we have crown corporations (government-owned) without the assumption that we are communist.

Of course since the bailouts anyone with any sense should see the situation for what it is, but I’m sure those same arguments will still be used against universal healthcare.