Tomorrow, Defense Sec. Robert Gates is going to tell the world how, after consulting with the White House and his Pentagon buddies, he’s going to make Don’t Ask Don’t Tell less of a d-bag policy. Like, how?
No more dismissals of gay servicemembers unless they specifically out themselves and “leaves the chain of command no legal choice but to proceed” with a full investigation, relays Spencer Ackerman. That means third-party outings, such as the ones that got Sgt. Jene Newsome dismissed, are gone — but only for new cases; the new rules won’t apply retroactively. How the new policy would effect folks like Lt. Col Victor Fehrenbach, who was forced to come out to fend off false rape allegations, is TBD. But it’s pretty clear that self-outers, like Lt. Dan Choi, who came out on Rachel Maddow‘s television show, would still face dismissal.
Gates is expected to say the changes will “slow and/or reduce the number of discharges.”
Told you it’d be less asshole-y, but still asshole-y. Because the entire point of DADT was that it would protect gay servicemembers from being removed unless they outed themselves. So what you have here is a rectifying of the law’s overly broad interpretation that went beyond its spirit when President Bill Clinton signed it into law. But yeah, it’s a welcome change.
How about we take this to the next level?
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AxelDC
Gee, thanks….
1billionserved
This may stop the witch hunts, but it isn’t an answer. The true answer is to get rid of DADT, and let all people serve openly and honestly.
Jon
Still open, and currently contracting into ROTC. 😛
fredo777
Yeah, this is still some shit. It’s just a downgrade from bullshit to maybe dog shit. Whichever smells least.
Devon
So now we’re only firing the ones with the balls to out themselves? That’s…Nice…I guess……
An Other Greek
unacceptable
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Bunny Snuggles
Well, how acceptable would it have been to our Black brothers and sisters to have been told that they would be allowed to sit in a seat at the front of the bus as long as they kept a bag over their heads and white gloves on in order to disguise their pigmentation?
But, what the hell, it a step in the right direction when the bigots aren’t ripping the bags off your heads and outing you — correct?
Note: Before anyone accuses me of “daring” to use the comparison of one example of inequality and discrimination to another, just remember that non-whites are kicked out under DADT in disproportate numbers compared to Whites.
Look it up!
http://www.queerty.com/dadt-discriminates-against-gays-and-blacks-20090911/
mark
COWARDS they aren’t worthy of ONE gay or lesbian risking their lives for.
This also won’t produce ONE withdrawl from the gAyTM….still closed.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
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Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
BALDERDASH!
“the entire point of DADT was” NOT “that it would protect gay servicemembers from being removed unless they outed themselves”!!!!
It was to appease military homohaters by nailing gays so deep into a dark closet that the only way they could keep from being fired was as a mute, self-loathing eunuch.
I’m glad to see any gay servicemembers saved, but call off the statue building to our Fierce Advocate still refusing to use the powers Congress gave him to freeze all discharges in the name of national security. If repeal and a pony are just around the corner, why wait?
These changes, which just months ago Secretary of DEFENSE OF DADT was telling us the same Pentagon General Counsel told him he COULDN’T do, are just a political stunt to put people to sleep while they run out the clock on repeal.
We’re being played again by Perpetual Candidate Obama.
Pip
its a stop gap solution. better than nothing, assuming they get a real fix by the end of this year.
Tim W
The only upside I see is after a bunch of these soldiers are outed by 3rd parties and not discharged for it it will blunt the arguments made by the opponets of DADT. These people will still be gay soldiers serving openly and the army will not collapse thus throwing water on the fire of all the tired arguments against it.
Lanjier
Same old Democratic Party bullshit. Keep the hate laws, but throw a dog a bone. Well, we aren’t playing fetch anymore Fuckbama.
Rainfish
Well, if this undeserving-fascist-pig-of-a-country’s patriotic Gay and Lesbian service members can’t be thrown out by somebody else outing them — even after it is then known that they are Gay or Lesbian — then, perhaps, they could (secretly) ask their gay friends and/or family to “out” them publicly so that they can serve openly in the military.
Have all of the brothers and sisters, moms and dads, friends and family of Gays and Lesbians come on talk shows and give interviews, or post ads in newspapers (holding up photos) and talk about how proud they are of their Gay sons and/or Lesbian daughters, brothers, sisters or friends, and then identify them by name. What are the gutless homophobic assholes going to do then?
Convoluted, but it might work.
Good ol’ America, the first to proclaim itself the quintessential bastion of freedom, and the very last Western Democracy to actually become one.
HISTORY is a bitch and truly unforgiving. There is going to be payback someday for all of this bullshit the moral midgets in America and the human rights abusing troglodytes here have put us through.
Watch, wait, and see.
I’m getting up there in years, but I want to live long enough to someday spit in their hateful, morally diseased, collective ugly faces and shout, “You lose assholes! Good triumphs over evil once again! Now, slither back under your rock and wait for your own extinction — just like all past vile plagues on humanity.”
Truly, I pray…Oh, make-believe-Easter-bunny-god-zombie Jesus, please let me live long enough to see that happen. And don’t make me wait until I’m in adult diapers either, bitch.
Amen.
Cam
Nice stall tactic, but this was supposed to be how the law was going to be enforced in the first place. Only took marches, threates of losing the policy etc… to get them to say that they might actually start abiding by it. Nice try, but repeal this piece of garbage now.