Terrorists are bad. We know this, but it is impossible to comprehend the level of fear and humiliation they have reduced us to until you are sitting in your bathroom at 11:30pm the night before your vacation, stuffing little 3-oz. bottles of moisterizer and hair gel into a quart-sized plastic bag and manuevering them until you have hand cramps and you are ready to sign up for the military right then and there to go fight the bastards yourself. Hey, the military could use me. I'm 5'6" with a little extra weight in the hip-and-thigh area, I can't lift more than 15 lbs (and that's pushing it) and all matter of combat terrifies the bejesus out of me.
But I'm straight.
Today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Obama have let us know that while they do plan to play lip service to lifting the atrocious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy from the US military, they don't plan to actually do anything about it. See article here. They're far too busy right now. It can wait.
I voted for the President and said from the start that I would support him and hold him to the very high expectations that he himself laid out. And now is the time to hold him accountable.
When our first African American president says that a civil rights - a HUMAN RIGHTS issue - can wait, that he can afford to put it on the backburner, something is gravely amiss.
The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy" is not only unconstitutional, it is unconscionable. It says to the LGBT community, "We accept you as long as you deny who you are." It routinely allows the military to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. Not on their job performance. Just their sexual orientation.
If it were possible to hide race or gender, and the military had the same policy towards black people and women, would this be allowed? No.
How is time management an excuse? How complicated is this? The policy is wrong, constitutionally and morally, not to mention just bad policy for the military, which hemmorages good soldiers of all ranks every year under this rule. So reverse it. Write an executive order. Do what needs to be done. It is very simple.
President Obama, if there were ever a time to prove to this country the value of having an African American president, beyond all the hype and the commemorative coins available for three installments of $9.95 plus shipping and handling, beyond the speeches and the assertions that we are all equal, this is the time.
Make ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" a priority.
For more information, you can visit http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009/03/131-dont-ask-dont-tell.html. You can also sign a petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/DOtell/petition.html.
This is important. For all of us.
1 comments:
Thing is, sexual orientation does not get the same judicial review as gender or racial discrimination. When these cases actually get decided, they don't get strict or even intermediate scrutiny, which means the government has a much easier burden to uphold.
E.O. also won't do it, since Congress passed it into law in 1993. We'd need to push this back through Congress for it to have the same effect.
Several circuits have already rejected 5th and 1st Amendment claims, which, as our system works, makes the policy Constitutional, though the S. Ct. has refused cert. so far, though there is a lot of question over how it will stand up since Lawrence v. TX . Many courts still say that in accord with pre-Lawrence authority,
that Congress had set forth a rational reason for the statute, which is to "promote unit cohesion and discipline," and this is achieved.
For a great look at how the courts handle these claims, read this 1st Cir. opinion from last year: http://sldn.3cdn.net/cc3a6f392d47a745fc_3nm6b5jrk.pdf
I guess my point is, without defending him, it isn't like Obama can just flip a switch on this one. He's already having to use a TON of his political good will to get Congress together on the economy. Every branch can only push so much without getting checked by the other one. He could, for instance, issue an E.O. to the military not to enforce Don't Ask, but he would strangle himself for the next three years in Congress for anything else he wanted to do.
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