Obama Going to End Don't Ask/Don't Tell Military Policy

Hey you are the one who said it wasn't political, but practical for political reasons. So ummkay right back at you pal.

Good for him I guess? George Bush said we would cure cancer within the life of his presidency.

Dude, are you serious? His administration misrepresented this as something else. I didn't say he had the power to do something he didn't do, I said he misrepresented something he did as something it wasn't. It also amuses me that his administration hides behind the legal blocks implemented by a law they promised to repeal and then argued in defense of.

This would be true if I were comparing him to other presidents. By your statement, every single president is the best when it comes to gay rights because there isn't anything to compare them to?

I hold him to what he said during his campaign. To answer your earlier point about it only being 1 1/2 years, you are right. Like I said a million times, I am not saying he is a right wing anti-gay teabagger, I'm saying there really isn't any reason to praise his work on gay issues just because he's done a little more than the last democratic president.

 

As a side note: Has anyone else noticed the crazy **** conservatives has been spewing the last couple of days in reaction to repealing DADT?

First there was the the crazy proclaiming Hitler Used Gay Soldiers Because They had "No Limits to the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict."

and...

Earlier today, we had claims that gay soldiers would be too ferocious and mean. Now we have the Family Research Council's angle on keeping DADT. They had a conference call this afternoon to announce their new 'report' claiming that ending DADT will lead to a precipitous rise in gay rape in the US Armed Forces.

--Josh Marshall



these people have lost their minds!

 

I guess it is possible that gay rape would go up if more gay men joined the military. Seems like such an insignificant issue, but I guess technically it would likely be accurate.

That said, I am infinitely more worried about sex crimes against the women already in the military.

 

raciss.

 

That depends if he's more interested in scoring points or actually changing things. You can call it politics; it's also realism.

I agree with this one.

I think if you asked him, he'd say it's more important to use his limited political capital on things like health care, finreg, etc. Not everything can be an equal priority. But he has stuck his neck out - there's no political benefit to him for doing things the way he has. He's getting criticized by both sides for doing too much and doing too little on DADT, for example - so the benefit here is not political points for him.

Not true - the article you listed said some supervisors had discretion. So some people had those benefits and others didn't. It was luck of the draw. Now, everyone has them.

 

Good; it's about time. Don't really have anything else to say on the matter.

 

1. Kudos to Obama for finally getting around to correcting Clinton's horribly cynical policy, which set back gay rights more than it advanced them.

2. The reason that Obama is the most pro-gay rights president in history is indeed, as justtxyank has suggested, because he has no competition. Before Clinton there was no possibility of a US president doing something for gay rights. We just weren't there yet. Clinton could have done something if he'd really cared and had also been a little brave. But he didn't and he wasn't. So Clinton did suck on gay rights, but at least he didn't actively campaign on and then try to push through a constitutional ban on gay marriage, like Bush did. Bush was our most anti-gay president in history, just as Obama has been the most pro-gay. That's largely because gay rights never even came up as an issue until the 80s and then they were not enough of an issue for presidents to even mention them. So even though there's been little real difference between them and their policies (or even their positions), Bush is clearly the most anti-gay president in history and Obama is clearly the most pro-gay.

3. I agree with pretty much everything justtxyank has said in this thread. I'm going to pick one of his posts from this thread at random now and rep him.

 

yeah, you could, but if they discover you're not gay you go to jail

 

Thanks. Who would have thought that you and I would end up agreeing with each other as much as we have?

I must be getting soft in my old age.

 

As the repeal of DADT approaches, I'm thinking more and more that it's a pretty big deal, symbolically at least. It's the first legislation of its sort, isn't it, in its explicit acceptance of homosexuality? And in the military, no less? Think how far the cause of gay rights has come, during our lifetimes. I think, to gays at least, even though gay rights still have a long way to go, this is going to feel like a big deal when it happens.

 

But... how do they discover that? Sure, you could get married but many gay people get married. You could also be bisexual and attracted to both sexes?

 

Fail.

Promises, promises, Obama.

 

They should've done this a lot earlier and away from elections.

 

shorter Reid: "this is about Republicans stifling debate. now go away, i don't want to discuss this anymore."

 

EDIT: Nevermind....

 

To a certain extent yes, of course it is.

 

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He should have issued the executive order months ago. It was a mistake not to.