COMMENTERS — “WHY are so many people ignoring the giant rare diamond in the dark mineshaft of that interview. Now read this slowly. I can’t spell it out in your hand from way over here. Reid THEN said, “‘My hope is that it can be done administratively’. A Democratic aide later clarified that Reid was speaking about the possibility of using AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO SUSPEND DISCHARGES or perhaps halting enforcement of the policy by changing departmental regulations within the Department of Defense.” Got that? Now remember how the Obazombies have been screeching like banshees for the last two months: “OBAMA CANNOT ISSUE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO STOP DISCHARGES! HE CAN’T IGNORE THE LAW!!” and White House Talking Bird Robert Gibbs and various Defense Department Flying Blue Monkeys have been saying, “Oh, noooo. It wouldn’t be ‘permanent’ so we’re going to keep kicking out the fags until the cows er Congress comes home.” Well, now the HIGHEST RANKING DEMOCRATE IN THE US SENATE has just publicly said not only that Obama CAN but he SHOULD!!!!!” —Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com responding to “EVERYBODY Is Passing the Buck on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”
commenters
Drake
The problem is that Senator Reid also said that there are no co-sponsors to repeal the Don’t ask Don’t Tell and DOMA. In other words, he is saying that the Democrats in the Senate won’t touch gay issues, and he is punting the “problem” to Obama. These people are not our enemies, but they certainly are not acting like friends.
John in SF
Well, now the HIGHEST RANKING DEMOCRATE IN THE US SENATE has just publicly said not only that Obama CAN but he SHOULD!!!!!
I think that reads to much into Reid’s statement. When Reid says that his “hope is that it can be done administratively” he is saying, I believe, “Let this cup pass from me”. Reid believes that gay issues including DADT are political hot potatoes, and he doesn’t want to get caught with them. Its a sign of political cowardice. Just my opinion.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@John in SF:
What part of “A Democratic aide later clarified that Reid was speaking about the possibility of using AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO SUSPEND DISCHARGES”….which is a direct quote from the Advocate article….don’t you understand?
And how does it benefit us to assume the negative?
Alex
So…in summary, Obama passes the buck to the congress, and Reid passes it right back. Is there anyone up there from Missouri?
jamesn
Harry Reid needs to talk to a lawyer. I can’t find any language in DADT that allows the President or the Secretary of Defense to not separate service members after a finding is made. The closet language I was able to locate is at 10 USC 654(b)(1), but it’s last sub section, E, says:
(E) the member does not have a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.
The graph just before that one, D, seems to be the clause people refer to when they say the president can stop the discharges. While is says the secretary has discretion in individual cases to not discharge if, “the member’s continued presence in the armed forces is consistent with the interests of the armed forces,” the wording of D requires that E also be true.
Sorry Harry, this one is on Congress. The President and the DoD too, but it’s the Congress that must act to make the change.
If anyone wants to read the entire act for themselves, it’s here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/654.html
John in SF
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: EXECUTIVE ORDER TO SUSPEND DISCHARGES”….which is a direct quote from the Advocate article….don’t you understand?
I understood that completely, and I didn’t dispute the reference.
And how does it benefit us to assume the negative?
A good question! I actually support an EO to suspend DADT discharges. But everybody (as far as I know) agrees that ultimately, DADT can ONLY go away with Congressional action. An EO would be a temproary measure, even if it works. And there is a lot of debate among folks who actually study DADT as to whether an EO is legal, and whether it would be challenged in court. In either case, Reid is passing the potatoe when he should be engaging in leadership.
What you call “assuming the negative” I would call a lowering of the bar. DADT was itself a lowering of the bar and thus we have the problem today. Our community has constantly lowered the bar, but it only causes problems. DADT, DOMA, civil unions are all compromises that our community was complicit in creating. Our community needs to stop asking for inequality. Now is the moment for full civil rights for the LGBT Americans. Not delays, not excuses, not a lowered bar. </i?
Cam
Actually, the house member who introduced a bill to end DOMA, and had co-sponsores, was suddenly offered a job by the Administration and was pulled from the house leaving her bill to linger and die.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@John in SF:
Well, OF COURSE, we should still work for EVENTUAL repeal but that’s DEAD DEAD DEAD at the moment. And the “temporary vs. permanent” argument is irrelevant in the long term because, even after repeal, a future Congress could always restore the ban. And, no, there is not “a LOT of debate AMONG folks who actually study DADT.” 99% of the noise has come from Obama apologists. There have only been TWO respected voices who have questioned stop-loss, and one of them has changed his mind:
“We, too, think President Obama should consider all viable options he can take on his own to get rid of this discriminatory law, including issuing a ‘stop-loss’ order.” – SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis, letter to NY Times, June 15, 2009.
We can focus on exercising our self-righteous anger about what’s not happening now….or we can focus on helping the actual victims of DADT by something that could happen.
Other points for your information and that of JAMESN below from Palm Center Director Dr. Aaron Belkin:
“I would like to respond briefly to recent discussions about whether President Obama could suspend gay discharges with the stroke of a pen. The Palm Center released a study which argued that the President could, in fact, suspend the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law via executive order [principally under 10 U.S.C. 12305]. The study was co-authored by three of the top experts on military law in our community, all of whom are nationally respected law professors or practitioners, and military veterans.
While some of those who have critiqued the idea of an executive order are lawyers, THEY ARE NOT EXPERTS IN MILITARY LAW, and there are a number of errors in their analyses:
(1) This issue has little to do with the Constitutional question of divided responsibility for oversight of the military, which is mentioned only in passing in our study. Rather, CONGRESS HAS SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED THE PRESIDENT, BY LAW, TO SUSPEND ANY LAW RELATING TO SEPARATION, DISCHARGE AND RETENTION DURING NATIONAL SECURITY EMERGENCIES. CONGRESS HAS DEFINED SUCH EMERGENCIES, AND WE ARE IN ONE NOW. The statutory authority that Congress has given to the President means that there is no need to decide broader constitutional questions.
2) Members of Congress who oppose the order WOULD NOT HAVE STANDING TO FILE A SUIT to challenge an executive order. The fear that Congress would be likely to challenge a presidential order is premised on the assumption that the president would be doing an end-run around Congress. As mentioned above, Congress has given the president authority to sign such an order by law. THERE IS NO END-RUN INVOLVED.
(3) THE DETAILS OF HOW VARIOUS SERVICES NOW IMPLEMENT STOP-LOSS REGULATIONS ARE IRRELEVANT. What matters is that the statute authorizing such regulations also authorize the president to suspend any law relating to discharge, separation and retention during national security emergencies. THE PRESIDENT IS NOT LIMITED TO PRIOR STOP-LOSS MODELS in exercising his stop-loss authority.
(4) An executive order WOULD NOT SIMPLY DELAY LGB DISCHARGES UNTIL THE STOP-LOSS IS LIFTED. Under federal law, the President has the authority to “suspend any provision of law,” not only to suspend discharges under a law. The draft executive order contained in the report spells out the effect of suspending the law, which includes suspension of all enforcement, investigations, proceedings, or other personnel actions.
Some of those who have critiqued our study do not seem to grasp THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUSPENDING THE LAW AND SUSPENDING DISCHARGES. Congress has been tepid about the [DADT repeal] Military Readiness Enhancement Act and the leadership has made clear that movement on this issue is unlikely any time soon. IN THE MEANTIME, CAREERS ARE DESTROYED AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY IS WEAKENED, WHICH BOTH GIVE A SENSE OF URGENCY TO THE NEED TO HALT DISCHARGES.
While many people in our community have done heroic work in educating Congress about the need for repeal, the focus on Congressional lobbying need not preclude other avenues to a swift end to the discharges of gay and lesbian troops, including IMMEDIATE EXECUTIVE ACTION. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that AN EXECUTIVE ORDER WOULD MAKE IT EASIER, NOT HARDER, to repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law when Congress is ready to do so, because opponents will no longer be able to argue that discrimination is necessary for preserving military readiness and unit cohesion.
Again, the authors of our study are among the most respected experts on military law in our community. They simply do not do sloppy work. Reasonable arguments can be invoked on both sides of the question of whether the president has authority to—and should sign an executive order, but THE ARGUMENTS PRESENTED SO FAR ARE WITHOUT MERIT.”
John in SF
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: we should still work for EVENTUAL repeal but that’s DEAD DEAD DEAD at the moment.
If repeal is dead dead dead, its because there is
NO LEADERSHIP
NO LEADERSHIP
NO LEADERSHIP
Besides, you seem to have missed my earlier comment that” I actually support an EO to suspend DADT discharges”. As to whether there is disagreement on the legalities, I can only tell you that I have personally spoken with three attorneys engaged in LGBT civil rights law who are not “Obama apologists” and they dispute the Palm Center’s findings. I’m not an attorney, much less familiar with military law, so I can’t say who is right, I only know that there is more disagreement than you indicate. I certainly respect and truly want to believe that Palm is correct, and I think we should “give that one a go”.
In any case, an EO and Congressional action can and should proceed in parallel. Every day that we wait our country is less safe than it could be. Which still begs the questions, “Where is Congressional leadership? Why don’t they care about national security and civil rights?”
Rick Murray
Possibilities and hopes don’t equate to certainties.
Andrew
@jamesn:
The president does have the authority to suspend discharges under DADT. He has three separate avenues of authority to do this. It’s correct that he cannot repeal DADT, but he can suspend implementation of the act.
Now, the above is not to say that Harry Reid should get kudos. He is horrible as majority leader and needs to go. He’s no match for the GOP and he’s definitely not on “our side” of many issues.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@John in SF:
No one has complained about lack of leadership more than I. From Queerty to Towleroad to PamsHouseBlend to JoeMyGod to DavidMixner.com to SLDN’s blog to my own site in memory of the first person to challenge the ban 34 years ago, http://www.leonardmatlovich.com.
Obama and the power players in Congress are guilty exactly of what Obama indicted 1993 Democrats for [read “Bill Clinton”] in his detailed 2007 PROMISE to fight for DADT’s end:
“rather than embracing leadership and principle…we bowed to fear and prejudice.”
Let us agree to continue calling them on that and demanding both a freeze on discharges and repeal. Your attorney friends, and you, might be interested in the following:
There is more than half-a-century of stop-loss history that didn’t just, as some claim, apply to those in the process of being discharged…. WHENEVER the military has gotten to a point where they, as Candidate Obama phrased it when he promised to fight for DADT repeal…”need all hands on deck”…THEY have ignored the ban both when it was only “policy” and after it became “law.”
Based on research by Allen Berube for “Coming Out Under Fire,” in World War II it once even took the extreme form of “the adjutant general ordered the commanding general of the West Coast Air Corps Training Center in California to review the cases of some men ALREADY CONVICTED OF SODOMY “to determine their respective availability for military service” with “the view of conserving all available manpower for service in the Army.” He canceled the men’s dishonorable discharges and made them eligible for reassignment AFTER COMPLETING THEIR PRISON SENTENCES!
In 1945, facing manpower shortages during the final European offensive in Europe, Secty of War, Harry Stimson, ordered a review of all gay discharges and ordered commanders to “salvage” homosexual soldiers for service whenever necessary.
Only 5000 men were screened out of entering the military for being gay in WWII. The number of men discharged for being gay during WWII is also only in the low thousands out of 16 MILLION men who served. That’s A LOT of “looking the other way” however low a statistical incidence one ascribes to “numbers of gay men.”
Before and after both the Korean and Vietnam wars, gay discharge #s revealed an obvious stop-loss pattern.
1950, during Korean War – 483 discharges.
1953, when the Armistice was signed – 1353 discharges.
1966 – the Navy ALONE discharged 1708 gays.
1970 – when the US was deep in Vietnam, the Navy only discharged 461.
During the first Gulf War, a Pentagon spokesman said in relation to gay discharges, “Any administrative procedure is dependent on operational considerations of the unit that would administer such proceedings.” [And they will do whatever the President tells them to, formally or informally.]
After 9/11, President Bush signed executive Order #13223 that authorized the individual service branches to initiate a stop-loss which allowed them “to suspend certain laws relating to promotion, involuntary retirement, and separation” of military personnel.
In the “Army Commander’s Handbook,” updated in 1999 and still in effect, under the criterion of homosexuality: “if discharge is not requested prior to the unit’s receipt of alert notification, discharge isn’t authorized. Member will enter active duty with the unit.”
In 2005, a military spokesperson acknowledged they were sending openly gay service members into combat in Iraq.
[img]http://glaadblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/matlovich1.jpg[/img]
PJ
1) The President is the “Commander and Chief of the military.” It is up to him to decide things that happen in the military, not Congress.
2) Only Congress can declare war. This is Congress’s involvement in military issues. This is Congress’s ONLY involvement in military issues.
DADT should NEVER have been passed by Congress in the first place.
Obama is a coward when it comes to gay and lesbian issues. The more I get to see him in office, the less I like him.
Sam
@Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com: STOP SHOUTING!!!
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@John in SF:
@John in SF:
No one has complained about lack of leadership more than I. From Queerty to Towleroad to PamsHouseBlend to JoeMyGod to DavidMixner.com to SLDN’s blog to my own site in memory of the first person to challenge the ban 34 years ago, http://www.leonardmatlovich.com.
Obama and the power players in Congress are guilty exactly of what Obama indicted 1993 Democrats for [read “Bill Clinton”] in his detailed 2007 PROMISE to fight for DADT’s end:
“rather than embracing leadership and principle…we bowed to fear and prejudice.”
Let us agree to continue calling them on that and demanding both a freeze on discharges and repeal. Your attorney friends, and you, might be interested in the following:
There is more than half-a-century of stop-loss history that didn’t just, as some claim, apply to those in the process of being discharged…. WHENEVER the military has gotten to a point where they, as Candidate Obama phrased it when he promised to fight for DADT repeal…”need all hands on deck”…THEY have ignored the ban both when it was only “policy” and after it became “law.”
Based on research by Allen Berube for “Coming Out Under Fire,” in World War II it once even took the extreme form of “the adjutant general ordered the commanding general of the West Coast Air Corps Training Center in California to review the cases of some men ALREADY CONVICTED OF SODOMY “to determine their respective availability for military service” with “the view of conserving all available manpower for service in the Army.” He canceled the men’s dishonorable discharges and made them eligible for reassignment AFTER COMPLETING THEIR PRISON SENTENCES!
In 1945, facing manpower shortages during the final European offensive in Europe, Secty of War, Harry Stimson, ordered a review of all gay discharges and ordered commanders to “salvage” homosexual soldiers for service whenever necessary.
Only 5000 men were screened out of entering the military for being gay in WWII. The number of men discharged for being gay during WWII is also only in the low thousands out of 16 MILLION men who served. That’s A LOT of “looking the other way” however low a statistical incidence one ascribes to “numbers of gay men.”
Before and after both the Korean and Vietnam wars, gay discharge #s revealed an obvious stop-loss pattern.
1950, during Korean War – 483 discharges.
1953, when the Armistice was signed – 1353 discharges.
1966 – the Navy ALONE discharged 1708 gays.
1970 – when the US was deep in Vietnam, the Navy only discharged 461.
During the first Gulf War, a Pentagon spokesman said in relation to gay discharges, “Any administrative procedure is dependent on operational considerations of the unit that would administer such proceedings.” [And they will do whatever the President tells them to, formally or informally.]
After 9/11, President Bush signed executive Order #13223 that authorized the individual service branches to initiate a stop-loss which allowed them “to suspend certain laws relating to promotion, involuntary retirement, and separation” of military personnel.
In the “Army Commander’s Handbook,” updated in 1999 and still in effect, under the criterion of homosexuality: “if discharge is not requested prior to the unit’s receipt of alert notification, discharge isn’t authorized. Member will enter active duty with the unit.”
In 2005, a military spokesperson acknowledged they were sending openly gay service members into combat in Iraq.
schlukitz
@Sam:
I don’t think that [email protected] Matlovich.com’s intent is to shout.
I’m certain that he is merely accentuating the points that he is trying to make rather than using bold italic, which I have learned, is a real pain in the ass to set up on Queerty, each and every time you want to draw attention to a specific point.
Andrew
@PJ:
“2) Only Congress can declare war. This is Congress’s involvement in military issues. This is Congress’s ONLY involvement in military issues.”
Actually, that’s not correct. But I agree with you that DADT should never been enacted -and- that POTUS should be exerting leadership and authority on the issue.