In a 229-186 vote, the House passes the $700 billion Defense Department spending bill, which has that DADT repeal (timeline) attached. The bill is now in the hands of the Senate, which might want to clean up that $485 million the House allotted for a new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that has Obama threatening a veto. [CBS]
House Passes Defense Bill With DADT Repeal Attached
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Justin_Activist
This stupid compromise is going to get filibustered away unless we make some demands on Jon McCain and his friends.
Demanding = Rights.
Get in the game and start making demands – the louder the better.
WildCat
Wait, I thought Democrats hate gays?
WiseUp
Most do, Wildcat. But they want our votes, so they’re doing something that at least LOOKS like something.
Justin_Activist
We don’t have the 60 votes to beat filibuster. Will you spend your weekend having fun OR will you DEMAND those missing votes. We need 2 votes in the US Senate or the idea of DADT repeal goes away. What are YOU doing about it?
I’m going to make demands. I am an Activist. We need more of me. Get involved or at least go on a hunger strike or handcuff yourself to something.
Enjoy your weekend, or work for our equality. You can’t enjoy your equality if you’re always enjoying yourself.
Demanding = Rights
Loki Renard
Good luck, gays and lesbian service men and women of America. The world is rooting for you. (Though in some parts of the world, that actually means fucking you, which may or may not be true according to your own personal circumstances.)
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
@ No. 1 ad No. 4 JustinActivist
This is a great day to be gay! With 78% of America is support of ending DADT, and with the DADT repeal attached to the Military budget, the Senate cannot sustain not voting for military funding. If the Senate refuses to attach the DADT amendment to the military appropriations, they will be forced to on the reconciliation bill. There just is no way in hell that the House, after gaining approval, will agree to dropped it. Should a stalemate occur, public opinion is very heavily on our side.
And the compromise is not stupid. DADT was a policy placed into the Military Code of Conduct by President Clinton; afterward, Congress codified the policy into law. Repealing the law does not repeal the policy in the code of conduct. However, once the codified DADT law is repealed, the military can self-determine how and when to change the code of conduct. And by the “military” that means the president, he is the CiC and his is the only opinion that matters.
DR
@ Mike in Asheville:
And without a repeal by law, it’s much more easily undone in the future. We lost non-discrimination clauses and there’s no moratorium. People are being misled on the true scope of the amendment.
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
@No. 7 DR
What? The law MUST be repealed before the Code of Conduct can be changed. My comment is that I don’t think that the wingnuts, led by John McCain, can sustain not approving the military budget with the repeal amendment attached.
Should McCain succeed with his threatened filibuster, which is more unlikely than not, but should it happen, the Bill must go to reconciliation: that is, the House and Senate passed different bills. In the required reconciliation, where the reconciliation committee is dominated by Democrats, I do not believe that the reconciliation bill will get out of committee without the repeal amendment attached, nor that the House would approve the reconciliation without the amendment attached. And, generally, under Senate rules, there are rules in place that limit the ability to filibuster reconciliation bills.
Once the law is changes, then the Pentagon can take action to repeal the DADT policy that is a part of the Code of Conduct. And the Pentagon takes it orders from the president.
jeffree
End the war. End DADT. Friday, the US announced the 1000th military casualty in Afghanistan.
We’ve lost more troops there since the rampup the last year than since our entry into Afghanistan. The situation there is becoming more & more violent, with no end in sight, and no real progress in winning the hearts & minds of the Afghans. Whatever we’re fighting for there, it’s sure doesnt seem to be working.
No one knows (or is counting) how many of those service members were lesbian or gay. We dont know how many of the 94,000 troops stationed there now are LGB. Nor do we know for sure that # for the 92,000 in Iraq.
Ending DADT is a priority, of course, affecting US military women & men wherever they’re stationed or on reserve.
In the fight to get DADT repealed, ler’s not please ++forget++ that ending these deadly wars is a priority as well.
whatever
@jeffree: “In the fight to get DADT repealed, ler’s not please ++forget++ that ending these deadly wars is a priority as well.”
Thank you! It’s about time someone said this. The repealing DADT discourse had taken a tone of rah-rah, military boosterism that characterizes any debate regarding the military. That’s letting the militaristic right frame the debate on his terms. Like gays need to “prove” something by being in the military. BS.
Brutus
@Justin_Activist: We have made more progress in 6 months that the rest of you did in 40 years. STFU.”
WOW. WOW.
You need to go learn your God damned history.
DR
@Mike:
The law doesn’t have to be repealed by Congress. The plan here is internal regulatory policies and executive orders. Read Belkin’s piece in the Huffington Post where he acknowledges that this is how the full repeal is to happen. All this amendment does is allow the Pentagon to do it’s thing. It’s not a full repeal by force of law. And there isn’t a plan to have Congress do that, it would seem.
That’s what my comments were in response to. Although I have to admit I am enjoying the irony created by this situation. Obama has to either accept the law and give up what he wants or veto the entire thing and lose the DADT compromise he approved.
Justin_Activist
@Brutus: ALL of the recent progress is because of GetEQUAL and the coordinated demanding around the Country.
There is some good news regarding Dan Choi. This from FoodMuseum.com
“The most innovative hunger strikers so far, however, have been Turkish Marxists protesting their country’s shift from dormitory-style prisons to Western-style cells. Their fasts, which claimed an inmate’s life this past February, are designed to keep the striker alive as long as possible; some of the strikers have lasted longer than 300 days. Their secret is to ingest salt, unrefined sugar, and vitamins, which limit weight loss to just a few ounces per day.”
In an ironic twist I thought Dan Choi would succumb before July 4th. But he could last all the way until April 1st. Wait, that’s ironic, too.
Brutus
@DR: You’re wrong. DADT is mandated by statute. 10 U.S.C. § 654. A President cannot overturn or ignore a statute by executive order or any other means, at least so long as we’re to continue living under rule of law and not a military coup. DADT has to be repealed or amended legislatively—by Congress.
Brutus
@Justin_Activist: “ALL of the recent progress is because of GetEQUAL”
(1) Correlation is not causation. People have been setting things in place for a long time before GetEQUAL showed up at the last minute. Was GetEQUAL irrelevant? I doubt it. But they also didn’t do this alone by a long shot.
(2) “All of the recent progress” is NOTHING compared to removing homosexuality from the DSM, decriminalizing homosexual activity, establishing a significant level of public acceptance, and so forth.
Brutus
@Justin_Activist: So when you say, “We have made more progress in 6 months that the rest of you did in 40 years,” you are not only wrong, but you show staggering ignorance for queer history and immense disrespect for everyone who came before.
Justin_Activist
@Brutus: These demands have been correlated by GetEQUAL and their leadership. They have started a huge response from people and the media. this have never happened before.
We have only just begun to apply pressure, but we have proven that demanding and getting in people faces (even the Prez) works very quickly. There was no repeal until Kip Williams insulted Obama.
Why is it so hard for some of you to see that we should have been making trouble a long time. You can keep begging, but we’re getting results.
LuvPeaceDemanding
Justin_Activist
@Brutus: Et tu Brute?
I think I understand you, “Brutus.”
Look what i found out: “Marcus Brutus was a good friend to Julius Caesar, but not good enough. He had moral values dealing with Rome and its people. Brutus’ values then made him join a conspiracy against Caesar put together by Cassius. Brutus joined this mainly because he didn’t want Caesar to turn his back on Rome so there would be a reasonable reason for killing Caesar. If Brutus wasn’t in the play, there would be no “Tragedy” in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. “
I guess it would be useless for us Activists that are leading the fight to expect any allegiance from you. I smell a rat.
whatever
@Justin_Activist: “Their secret is to ingest salt, unrefined sugar, and vitamins, which limit weight loss to just a few ounces per day.”
That’s cheating!
Brutus
@Justin_Activist: Wrong Brutus, though they’re not unrelated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Yates_(politician)#Brutus
Brutus
@Justin_Activist: “There was no repeal until Kip Williams insulted Obama.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
DR
@Brutus:
Actually, you would be incorrect, Brutus. Go read the HuffPo piece by Belkin, who acknowledges that this is not a repeal by law. This amendment creates a way for a so-called repeal to happen, but not a repeal by Congress which means it will never be a done deal.
If the Palm Center has this concern (as much as they gloss over it), I would have to say that those of you denying it are simply not as well-schooled as you’d like to think. I trust the Palm Center and its research over some guy posting on the internet.
D'oh, The Magnificent
@Brutus: Palm is correct that essentially the bill passed is a trigger.
What that means is that the ability to repeal is premised on a conditional future event happening. If that event, certification, doesn’t happen, then DADT will remain the law of the land.
Its clear that folks like Brutus are not schooled in statutory language construction. He or she thinks that this is a repeal on its face when in fact its a conditional trigger upon the happening of a future event, and if that event happens, then we obtain statutory repeal.
The problem , of course, is that this does not address previous regulations under the military code. Thus, you would still require president executive order to address those issues that would leave homosexuality criminalized in the military rather than it eing a product of discharge for DADT. It would be discharge by means that existed prior to 1993.
Now, public pressure matters to prevent all o fthat.
And you are right- the Palm Center research, especially on the president authority to use stop loss is incredible. Especially since such stop loss was used in the past briefly by the Bush administration right after 9/11 to prevent charge of gay services member.
They know its historically possible, but refuse to use the powers already granted to them by Congress.
reason
@jeffree: Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan is a means to an end. If we don’t it does not negate the fact that we are there to destroy a terrorist network bent on harming America. They recently tried to hit us in New York and with the underware bomber during Christmas. If the Afghans do not respond to our carrots it is a tragedy becuase were going to have to show them a larger stick. We’re not there for lofty and grandiose dreams like in Iraq, the enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan bombed us and will not rest untill we’re dead or they are dead. The lives lost in the cold rugged mountains of Southern Asia will pale in comparison to the lives that will be lost here if we lose our resolve or let Al Qaeda and their afilliates operate unfettered.
Brutus
@D’oh, The Magnificent: @DR: You both seem to be arguing that the current proposal isn’t a facial, complete, unconditional, and immediate repeal of DADT.
I agree with that and never said otherwise.
You characterize your arguments as somehow responding to or disproving my statement that DADT has to be repealed legislatively. They do not. I said, “DADT has to be repealed or amended legislatively—by Congress.” You then replied with cites from HuffPo and the Palm Center on why the current proposal isn’t an immediate unconditional repeal. That’s correct, but it doesn’t change the fact that repeal has to be done legislatively. (Stop-loss, of course, is not repeal.)
Accusing me of being “not schooled in statutory language construction” is not only laughably untrue; it’s irrelevant, as I wasn’t construing the language of the proposed repeal mechanism. Please try to focus on the argument at hand.
Brutus
Is this the article to which I’ve been referred?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-belkin/jim-crow-really_b_588418.html
Because he acknowledges that “[t]he community fears a return to the pre-Clinton days when the gay ban was a military regulation, not a law, and the Pentagon had free license to discriminate,” but argues that “the regulatory path will be durable” and concludes:
“The bottom line is this. The main obstacle to equality is the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. The Obama administration has bravely pursued the only politically viable path to getting rid of that law. Equal treatment will take a little longer to achieve. But, assuming that Congress adopts the compromise proposed yesterday, the administration’s achievement will be damn good, even historic. That’s what counts.”
Brutus
Or his previous article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-belkin/obama-administration-defe_b_559487.html
“Some gay rights groups oppose it, however, because they fear that a legislative option that does not include a specific, statutory implementation plan would allow a future administrations to reinstate the gay ban.
This is, frankly, hogwash. Once the law is off the books, and after the Pentagon completes its study, the administration would work with military brass to reformulate personnel regulations. Once those regulations are reformulated, gay discharges would cease. And once gay discharges ceased, it would be almost impossible for a future administration to reinstate them. Neither the military nor the public would have any appetite for a new gay ban. When George Bush tried to reverse a Clinton-era executive order mandating nondiscrimination of gays and lesbians in non-military federal agencies, he was unable to get away with it.
The gay rights community should adjust its goals immediately and work with Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” while allowing the Pentagon the flexibility to manage implementation as it sees fit. Otherwise, we are going to be waiting for repeal for a long, long time.”
Brutus
So, DR, I agree with you. I’m more inclined to trust the Palm Center than some guy/gal posting on the internet.
B
No. 8 · Mike in Asheville, nee “in Brooklyn” wrote, “My comment is that I don’t think that the wingnuts, led by John McCain, can sustain not approving the military budget with the repeal amendment attached.”
Something to keep in mind about McCain – he is running against a real wingnut, so he is trying to position himself to get the conservative vote. But, he’s running against the wingnut in a primary. After the primary (assuming McCain wins), he’ll have to run to the ‘left’ to try to reposition himself as a moderate.
It’s a standard Republican strategy, first used by Richard Nixon (as I recall), due to the Republican “base” being far more conservative than country as a whole.