There are two things we should all be insisting on from President Obama and Attorney General Holder right now. We all need to be united about this as a community. One, there is no excuse, and there can be none, for the continued enforcement of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, even in a scaled down version. The president says he’s against it, the American people are against it, it hurts our national security, and now a federal court has ruled it violates our sacred constitution. This insanity must end now. There must be a complete and immediate end to all DADT discharges. Second, there is no valid legal (or political) reason to pursue an appeal. There is no legal obligation to continue to defend a law declared unconstitutional by a sitting federal judge. We must insist on an unequivocal statement from the president that he will allow the ruling to stand, because it is in accordance with his long held view, but more importantly, because doing so is consistent with our constitution. We must expect and demand no less from him. No appeal. Let this ruling become the law of the land.
—Richard Socarides, the former Clinton LGBT adviser described by Americablog as somebody who is “often on tv and is widely quoted on LGBT issues,” as if that’s a litmus test for being respectable, continuing to ignore his own personal involvement in CREATING DON’T ASK DON’T TELL as he pleas with President Obama’s attorneys not to appeal the ruling that branded the law unconstitutional.
EARLIER:
The Irony of Richard Socarides’ Disbelief Over Team Obama Defending DOMA
Richard Socarides Blasts Obama’s ‘Missed Opportunity’ to Support Gay Marriage. What About Yours, Richard?
Steve
He has acknowledged it in the past. He admitted that everyone was completely blindsided by the furious backlash from the military and politicians alike, and how the unpreparedness let to the DADT disaster.
Justin
This political whore is as bad as Mehlman. It’s all a game.
He is also one of the organizers of the street clowns GetEqual.
I can’t figure out why anyone pays attention to him. If he was an attractive whore maybe I’d understand, but he isn’t. He’s a weasel.
Rick Brannon
What a tool.
Skeptical Cicada
It’s too bad that Justin’s comment makes no sense.
Gee, Justin, you don’t like insider tools, but you also don’t like “street clown” activists.
What do you like, bar flies with no political awareness at all?
Mike
One minor point that’s a little off topic. There’s nothing ‘sacred’ about the US Constitution. It was written by human beings. ‘God’ has NOTHING to do with it.
Just felt the need to point that out.
Justin
@Skeptical Cicada: It makes plenty of sense – I don’t like weasels. GetEqual and Socarides are both weasels. They are only looking to make money. GetEqual clowns make $120,00 a year, plus travel benefits and free pizza and beer.
B
No. 2 · Justin wrote, “This political whore is as bad as Mehlman.”
Before jumping to conclusions, read http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2010/06/socarides-i-urged-clinton-not-to-sign.html which states, “Socarides claims he publicly and privately opposed Clinton signing DOMA, and that the public record back up this claim. I emailed Socarides, requesting any URLs to proof that he indeed did what he said back in the 1990s. So far, Socarides has failed to provide us with a single URL to any document or news account verifing his claim.”
Now, here’s the catch: DADT was created as a policy in late 1993 as a compromise, with presidential and congressional involvement. At that point in time, the web was in its infancy. The first browser accepted by the general public was Mosaic, with version 0.5 release in early 1993 for Unix systems with ports to MacOS and Windows available in September, 1993. It took some time after that before people started seriously using the technology. So the lack of a URL might not be surprising, particularly since “public” does not mean in writing – it might have been in a speech that nobody bothered to transcribe and post on a web site. Any private discussion with Clinton of course would be just that – private with no publicly available record.
The only sensible thing to say is that Socarides claims to have opposed DADT while working for Clinton and that claim has not been verified or disproved.