With Obama’s Signature, ‘Don’t Ask’ Is Repealed

From NYT: By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — The military’s longstanding ban on service by gays and lesbians came to a historic and symbolic end on Wednesday, as President Obama signed legislation repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the contentious 17-year old Clinton-era law that sought to allow gays to serve under the terms of an uneasy compromise that required them to keep their sexuality a secret.

“No longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie or look over their shoulder,” Mr. Obama said during a signing ceremony in a packed auditorium at the Interior Department here. Quoting the chairman of his joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, Mr. Obama went on, “Our people sacrifice a lot for their country, including their lives. None of them should have to sacrifice their integrity as well.”

The repeal does not immediately put a stop to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Mr. Obama must still certify that changing the law to allow homosexual and bisexual men and women to serve openly in all branches of the military will not harm readiness, as must Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen, before the military can implement the new law. But the secretary and the admiral have backed Mr. Obama, who said ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” was a topic of his first meeting with the men. He praised Mr. Gates for his courage; Admiral Mullen, who was on stage with the president during the signing ceremony here, received a standing ovation.

While there is still significant resistance within the military to the change in policy, especially within the Marine Corps, at least one proponent — Representative Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts — insisted on Wednesday that this latest effort to integrate the armed services will go more smoothly than did racial or gender integration.

“Reality will very soon make it clear that there is nothing to worry about,” Mr. Frank said. He called the signing the biggest civil rights moment in the nation since the signing of voting rights legislation in the 1960s. “If you can fight for your country, you can do anything,” he said.

In the years since President Bill Clinton first enacted “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, some 17,000 service members have been discharged under the policy. While many gay people in the military are now breathing a sigh of relief, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents soldiers facing charges under the policy, is warning its members that they are “still at risk” because the repeal will not take full effect until 60 days after Mr. Obama, the defense secretary and admiral certify readiness.

“The bottom line is DADT is still in effect and it is not safe to come out,” the organization said.

For Mr. Obama, the ceremony — held at the Interior Department because the White House is tied up with holiday tours — marked yet another in a string of last-minute, bipartisan legislative triumphs, a surprising turnaround in the wake of the self-described “shellacking” his party took at the polls last month. He had already signed a bipartisan tax deal into law, and the Senate appears headed on Wednesday to approve a new nuclear arms pact with Russia, which will give him a significant foreign policy victory as he wraps up the first half of his term. He looked relaxed and upbeat as he soaked up the energy from an enthusiastic crowd.For the gay rights movement, which has been frustrated with the pace of progress under Mr. Obama, Wednesday marked a celebratory turning point. “Thank you, Mr. President,” someone shouted, as Mr. Obama took the stage, prompting a round of other shouts: “Chicago’s in the house, Mr. President! You rock, Mr. President!” Mr. Obama pronounced himself overwhelmed.

The audience for the ceremony included a who’s who of gay activists, among them Frank Kameny, who was fired from a civilian job as an Army astronomer in 1957 — an act that prompted him to found a gay rights advocacy organization in Washington D.C. and to file a lawsuit which went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1965 he picketed the White House, in the first ever demonstration there by gays.

Now white-haired at 85, Mr. Kameny also served as an enlisted Army soldier; he signed up in May 1943, he said, three days before he turned 18, and saw “front line combat” in Germany during World War II. He said he was asked if he had “homosexual tendencies” and denied it. “They asked, and I didn’t tell,” he said, “and I resented for 67 years that I had to lie.”

Senate Repeals DADT!

From NYT: By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.

By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens.

Mr. Obama hailed the action, which fulfills his pledge to reverse the ban. “As commander in chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known,” Mr. Obama said in a statement after the Senate, on a 63-33 vote, beat back Republican efforts to block a final vote on the repeal bill.

The vote marked a historic moment that some equated with the end of racial segregation in the military.

It followed a comprehensive review by the Pentagon that found a low risk to military effectiveness despite greater concerns among some combat units and the Marine Corps. The review also found that Pentagon officials supported Congressional repeal as a better alternative than an court-ordered end.

Supporters of the repeal said it was long past time to end what they saw as an ill-advised practice that cost valuable personnel and forced troops to lie to serve their country.

“We righted a wrong,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut who led the effort to end the ban. “Today we’ve done justice.”

Before voting on the repeal, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants who came to the United States at a young age, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check.

The 55-41 vote in favor of the citizenship bill was five votes short of the number needed to clear the way for final passage of what is known as the Dream Act. The outcome effectively kills it for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain since Republicans who will assume control of the House in January oppose the measure and are unlikely to bring it to a vote.

The Senate then moved on to the military legislation, engaging in an emotional back and forth over the merits of the measure as advocates for repeal watched from galleries crowded with people interested in the fate of both the military and immigration measures. “I don’t care who you love,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said as the debate opened. “If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn’t have to hide who you are.”

Mr. Wyden showed up for the Senate vote despite saying earlier that he would be unable to do so because he would be undergoing final tests before his scheduled surgery for prostate cancer on Monday.

The vote came in the final days of the 111th Congress as Democrats sought to force through a final few priorities before they turn over control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in January and see their clout in the Senate diminished.

It represented a significant victory for the White House, Congressional advocates of lifting the ban and activists who have pushed for years to end the Pentagon policy created in 1993 under the Clinton administration as a compromise effort to end the practice of banning gay men and lesbians entirely from military service. Saying it represented an emotional moment for members of the gay community nationwide, activists who supported repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” exchanged hugs outside the Senate chamber after the vote.

“Today’s vote means gay and lesbian service members posted all around the world can stand taller knowing that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ will soon be coming to an end,” said Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

The executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group that challenged the policy in federal court, thanked Republicans senators for participating in a historic vote. The director, R. Clarke Cooper, who is a member of the Army Reserve, said repeal will "finally end a policy which has burdened our armed services for far too long, depriving our nation of the talent, training and hard won battle experience of thousands of patriotic Americans. "

A federal judge had ruled the policy unconstitutionial in response to the Log Cabin suit, but that decision had been stayed pending appeal.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center in California, a research institute at the University of California in Santa Barbara that studies issues surrounding gays and lesbians in the military, said that the vote “ushers in a new era in which the largest employer in the United States treats gays and lesbians like human beings.”

In a statement on the group’s website, Mr. Belkin said: “It has long been clear that there is no evidence that lifting the ban will undermine the military, and no reason to fear the transition to inclusive policy. Research shows that moving quickly is one of the keys to a successful transition. If the President and military leadership quickly certify the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ they will ensure an orderly transition with minimal disruption."

Organizations that opposed repeal of the ban assailed the Republican senators who defied their party majority.

The Center for Military Readiness, a group that specializes in social issues in the military and has opposed repeal, said the new legislation “will impose heavy, unnecessary burdens on the backs of military men and women.” It said the Senate majority voted with “needless haste” by not waiting for hearings into a recent Department of Defense study of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Elaine Donnelly, president of the group, said that the Pentagon’s survey indicated that 32 percent of Marines and 21.4 percent of Army combat troops would leave the military sooner than planned if “don’t ask, don’t tell” were repealed.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said senators like Scott Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, “broke trust with the people” by voting on repeal before the federal budget was resolved and “have put the troops at risk during wartime.”

During the debate, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and his party’s presidential candidate in 2008, led the opposition to the repeal and said the vote was a sad day in history. “I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage,” Mr. McCain said. “And we could possibly and probably, as the commandant of the Marine Corps said, and as I have been told by literally thousands of members of the military, harm the battle effectiveness vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

He and other opponents of lifting the ban said the change could harm the unit cohesion that is essential to effective military operations, particularly in combat, and deter some Americans from enlisting or pursuing a career in the military. They noted that despite support for repealing the ban from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders have warned that changing the practice would prove disruptive.

“This isn’t broke,” Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said about the policy. “It is working very well.”

Other Republicans said that while the policy might need to be changed at some point, Congress should not do so when American troops are fighting overseas.

“In the middle of a military conflict, is not the time to do it,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia.

Only a week ago, the effort to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seemed to be dead and in danger of fading for at least two years with Republicans about to take control of the House. The provision eliminating the ban was initially included in a broader Pentagon policy bill, and Republican backers of repeal had refused to join in cutting off a filibuster against the underlying bill because of objections over the ability to debate the measure.

In a last-ditch effort, Mr. Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a key Republican opponent of the ban, encouraged Democratic Congressional leaders to instead pursue a vote on simply repealing it. The House passed the measure earlier in the week.

The repeal will not take effect for at least 60 days while some other procedural steps are taken. In addition, the bill requires the defense secretary to determine that policies are in place to carry out the repeal “consistent with military standards for readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention.”

Because of the uncertainty, Mr. Sarvis appealed to Mr. Gates to suspend any investigations into military personnel or discharge proceedings under the policy to be overturned in the coming months.

Mr. Lieberman said the ban undermined the integrity of the military by forcing troops to lie. He said 14,000 members of the armed forces had been forced to leave the ranks under the policy.

“What a waste,” he said.

The fight erupted in the early days of President Bill Clinton’s administration and has been a roiling political issue ever since. Mr. Obama endorsed repeal in his own campaign and advocates saw the current Congress as their best opportunity for ending the ban. Dozens of advocates of ending the ban — including one wounded in combat before being forced from the military — watched from the Senate gallery as the debate took place.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, dismissed Republican complaints that Democrats were trying to race through the repeal to satisfy their political supporters.

“I’m not here for partisan reasons,” Mr. Levin said. “I’m here because men and women wearing the uniform of the United States who are gay and lesbian have died for this country, because gay and lesbian men and women wearing the uniform of this country have their lives on the line right now.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a crucial proponent of the repeal, noted that some Republicans had indicated they might try to block Senate approval of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia because of their pique over the Senate action on the ban.

“How’s that’s for statesmanship?” Mr. Reid said.


Joseph Berger contributed reporting from New York.

Illinois Accepts New Kind of Union

From STLToday.com: When I was a kid, many families had a regular night to eat out. Ours was Thursday. We rotated among Carroll's, the Revere Room, the Clay-Mor, the National Trail Inn, Northgate and other lost gems of Collinsville's culinary past.

It also was restaurant night for a couple — friends of my parents — who dined on the same circuit. Our conversations were always warm. Childless themselves, the two lavished attention on my sister and me. They acted like any middle-aged married couple of the 1960s, except they weren't married. They couldn't be. They were two single women, living their lives together.

The precise nature of their relationship was beyond my youthful curiosity. Once I was mature enough to grasp the obvious, the questions in my mind did not range to inheritance rights, health insurance coverage or whether one might make medical decisions for the other.

Now, decades later, the Illinois Legislature has decided to confer rights and protections that those nice women at the next table probably would have found hard to imagine.

Not everybody's happy about it, and I find that hard to imagine.

Illinois is about to become the nation's 11th state, plus the District of Columbia, to provide some kind of legal recognition to same-sex couples.

The House passed SB1716 on a 61-52 roll call Nov. 30, and the Senate 32-24 the next day. A little Republican support (six votes) put it over the top in the House. Gov. Pat Quinn has promised to sign the bill into law, effective June 1, 2011.

Essentially, it provides husband-wifelike legal status to couples — homosexual or heterosexual — without religious connotation or the M-word. Hence, we say "civil union," not "marriage."

It feels like a small step. You see, we've already had state-sanctioned civil unions for a long time.

I wanted to become a partner in one almost 20 years ago. When I fell in love with my wife, she had an adorable 5-year-old son. But since he already had a perfectly viable father, Chris was not available for me to formally adopt.

What is adoption if not a civil union? People with no common blood enter a formal agreement that binds them as if they were kin. It guarantees rights of access and decision making. It provides a legal basis for each to share assets with — and take care of — the other.

Oh, the naysayers will quickly suggest that there is a huge difference: There is no sexual component to adoption. But homosexual civil unions aren't about sex either. They do not authorize any bedroom behavior that hasn't already been legal in every state since at least 2003, with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

Those who want Illinois statutes to reflect their judgment of homosexuality as an abomination didn't lose the battle in 2010. They lost it in 1961, when the Legislature made Illinois the first state to remove laws regulating sexual conduct between consenting adults. (Missouri rescinded its last restrictions in 2006, after the Lawrence case had rendered them meaningless.)

For the sake of political correctness, SB1716 is titled the "Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act." The "religious freedom" part up front just means that if you don't like it, don't bless it. Officially: "Nothing in this Act shall interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body. Any religious body, Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group is free to choose whether or not to solemnize or officiate a civil union."

Otherwise, the unions work a lot like the, well, that M-word. Unionists (unitees?) have to be at least 18, not closely related and neither married nor civilly united somewhere else. They get a license from the county clerk. They can dissolve the union under the same terms as a divorce.

For the record, these people still will not be related in federal eyes for such things as joint income tax returns or Social Security benefits. That's because of the Defense of Marriage Act, which was passed to protect the unions of we straight people.

In that regard, I have discussed the new Illinois law with my wife. We are happy to report that we think our marriage can survive it.

Civil Unions Advance in Illinois

From NYT: CHICAGO — Illinois lawmakers on Wednesday approved legislation allowing civil unions in this state, and the governor has indicated he will sign it, making Illinois one of only a handful of states to grant to same-sex couples a broad array of legal rights and responsibilities similar to those of marriage.

Advocates of the legislation, who had pressed the matter for years, pointed to the outcome as a sign that acceptance of gay men and lesbians is growing and not only on the coasts.

“Sober, clear-minded, cautious Midwesterners are taking this action,” said Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois, a gay-rights group.

Opponents complained about the timing of the vote (during a fall session before newly elected legislators arrive) and said they feared civil union legislation might ultimately harm the institution of marriage. “This will be the entry to a slippery slope,” Ron Stephens, a Republican state representative, said. “The next thing we’ll see will be consideration of gay marriage.”

Five states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, while New Jersey grants civil unions similar to the measure expected to take effect here in July. Four other states grant domestic partnerships with broad legal rights — bonds that some experts said carry many of the rights provided under Illinois’s new legislation if not the precise ceremonial recognition suggested by civil union.

The Illinois provision will provide couples many legal protections now granted to married couples, including emergency medical decision-making powers and inheritance rights. The legislation allows heterosexual couples to seek civil unions, too.

The result in Illinois comes at a shifting moment in the national battle over gay rights. With huge Republican gains in state capitols following the election last month, opponents of same-sex marriage predict a powerful push-back against recent efforts to legalize such unions. Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, said she had renewed hope for constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman in places like Minnesota, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

In Illinois, where Democrats dominate both state legislative chambers (and will next year, even after new lawmakers are seated) the votes were split: 32 to 24 in the State Senate on Wednesday, and 61 to 52 in the House a day earlier.

Supporters of gay rights widely praised Illinois’s decision, but many said the eventual goal remained legalizing same-sex marriage, not a separate civil union system.

McCain's DADT Mix

DOJ to Judge: Keep Enforcing DADT

From Advocate.com: The Department of Justice asked a federal judge Thursday to continue enforcing the military's ban on gay and lesbian service members, despite a ruling earlier this month that struck down "don't ask, don't tell" as unconstitutional.

In a 14-page filing, Justice Department attorneys argued that an immediate, permanent injunction against enforcing the law —one supported by Log Cabin Republicans, which successfully challenged DADT in court and has argued for a halt to all discharges of gay service members — would be "untenable." (A PDF of the government’s brief is here.)

"Because any injunction in this case must be limited to [Log Cabin Republicans] and the claims it asserts on behalf of its members – and cannot extend to non-parties – plaintiff’s requested world-wide injunction of [DADT] fails as a threshold matter," assistant U.S. attorney Paul Freeborne wrote.

DADT repeal advocates and attorneys representing Log Cabin Republicans immediately slammed the Justice Department's filing. Dan Woods, lead attorney for the national gay Republican group, called the arguments "ridiculous" and said his team would file a response as soon as Friday.

"It’s our view that the objections fail to recognize the implications of the government's defeat at this trial," Woods told The Advocate. "This case was never limited to only Log Cabin members. And the request for a stay ignores the harm that would be suffered by current and potential service members during a period of the stay."

In a late Thursday statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the filing "in no way diminishes the President’s firm commitment to achieve a legislative repeal of DADT — indeed, it clearly shows why Congress must act to end this misguided policy."

But Servicemembers United executive director Alex Nicholson said the Obama administration "had a choice to take several different routes [with the injunction], from the moderate and reasonable to the extremely ridiculous. It appears that they decided to go with the latter end of the spectrum."

Nicholson said the DOJ's filing further erodes faith in the administration for many gays and lesbians seeking substantive change. "Lately a lot of us were holding out hope that there would be a semi-reasonable response to this judicial victory. It appears that [Obama] might be disappointing us yet again," he said.

The Justice Department's arguments against an injunction come two days after legislative repeal of DADT was blocked in the Senate due to a Republican filibuster of the defense authorization bill, of which a repeal on the ban against openly gay service members is a component.

In Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America, U.S. district judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled earlier this month that the DADT statute, passed by Congress in 1993, violates free speech and due process rights of gay service members. She also ruled that LCR is entitled to a permanent injunction against DADT and gave Justice Department attorneys until Thursday to object to Log Cabin's proposed judgment in the case.

The Justice Department has argued that Phillips does not have the authority to issue a sweeping injunction against the ban on openly gay service members (Phillips rejected that argument in a February court hearing).

"[DOJ] has ignored all the law about deference to the military. [Judge Phillips] said before that deference does not mean abdication when constitutional rights were involved," Woods said.

The Justice Department has not yet filed an appeal in the case.

Among the government’s arguments in Thursday's filing, Freeborne wrote that an injunction would preclude the government from litigating other legal challenges to DADT, as well as prevent it from considering the terms of a stay banning discharges of gay soldiers. An immediate halt of discharges, they argued, would jeopardize successful implementation of repeal by interfering with the “ability of the Department of Defense to develop necessary policies, regulations, and training and guidance to accommodate a change in the DADT law and policy.”

“Contrary to [LCR's] repeated suggestions that the Court can simply order the immediate cessation of DADT without any disruption of the military’s operations,” Freeborne wrote, “the Secretary of Defense has stated that, to be successful in implementing a change to the DADT law and policy, the Department of Defense must ‘understand all issues and potential impacts associated with repeal of the law and how to manage implementation in a way that minimizes disruption to a force engaged in combat operations and other demanding military activities around the globe.’”

Woods criticized that argument as a been-there, done-that tactic. "It's the same argument they made before the trial. 'Let us have time to study it. Congress is considering repealing it.' Judge Phillips has rejected it before."

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Has to Go

From NYTimes.com:
By JONATHAN HOPKINS
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Since the 1993 law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” (D.A.D.T.) was enacted by Congress, more than 14,000 gay service members have been discharged, at a cost to taxpayers of $363 million over the last decade. I am one of them. I was discharged just one month ago.

Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Hopkins I am a 31-year-old West Point graduate who spent nine years in the military, served as a platoon leader in the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy and commanded both a Stryker Infantry Company and a brigade headquarters company in Alaska.

Many people do not even realize the D.A.D.T. policy is still being enforced, especially in light of recent legal rulings, or they think the policy merely asks us not to talk about it. But it goes much further, denying even our ability to exist legally within the military, regardless of the quality of our performance.

As a result, it makes any gay service member a target of anyone who chooses to make an accusation, or a casualty of any unlucky combination of facts that might expose him or her. All someone has to do is to be considered minimally reliable to report a service member as being gay. An investigation results.


I have always told people when discussing the military that “it makes everyone better, teaching us all important values like teamwork and selflessness.”

But if you are gay, I am no longer sure that is entirely accurate. People in the military are not trained to be liars. Our mission is not subterfuge, but that is what this policy forces those of us who are gay to become party to, and the cognitive dissonance is immense. We are trained to manage the fear that may descend during a firefight, but we do not expect to live under the daily fear that our peers may sense something different about us and report us as being gay.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Be
While I spent every hour at work trying, like all my peers, to be the perfect Army officer, taking care of and leading our soldiers, I also spent every day being paranoid, worrying about who suspected I was gay, and what they might do about it.

The paranoia is sickening, and it just eats you from within. Some quietly slip out of the service while others, indoctrinated to serve a cause that is just, stick it out.

The Department of Defense spends millions of dollars and dedicates immense amounts of time to ensure the psychological welfare of our service members remains sound. Except if you are gay. Some gay members of the Armed Services suffer from depression because they try to deal with being all they can be at work, but are unable to live a life that could make them happy.

Unfortunately, from 1993 until the spring of 2010, you could be reported as gay by your chaplain, your doctor and even your psychiatrist. Nowhere in the organization could you be safe if you were gay, even when the assistance provided could be vital.

A colleague of mine relayed a story of a soldier whose boyfriend was killed by a roadside blast while both were deployed. The only person the grieving soldier could safely talk to was an Australian officer he didn’t even know. His most trusted teammates — members of his unit — were not allowed to be there for him when he needed them most.

Failure Is the Only Option
There is no way that a gay service member can navigate this policy with honor, integrity, or self-respect intact. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen traditionally know virtually everything about one another. The military is inherently a personal affair. Thus, if you are gay and choose to have a relationship, you must isolate yourself from your otherwise inclusive and close-knit organization, then lie about your “housemate” and cover up where you socialized. There go the Army values of “honor” and “integrity” — values we all believe very deeply in.

If you attempt to comply, somehow, with the policy, you dedicate yourself to the most epic and despicably unnecessary sense of loneliness one can imagine, while working in a profession in which you desperately need the nurturing support of others. I know; I’ve been there. You are forced to lie when soldiers, peers or superiors ask you why you’re not married, or anything else about your personal life.

Many service members end up in a no-man’s-land: they break the rules (i.e. have relationships), but can never maintain something meaningful and long-lasting because of the pervasive environment of fear and deception that they have to maintain. Any route you take, you may be able to maintain your career, but you are destroyed bit by bit on the inside each step of the way. Part of you always feels stigmatized or ashamed for something you cannot change, no matter how badly you might want to.

And no matter what you do, you are somehow failing to live up to the military’s highest stated values, because you are an outlaw as a gay soldier from the day you step into the military. When told to “do the right thing” you are left with no feasible option meet that demand.

I Already Lived in a Post-D.A.D.T. Army
In my case, after the military learned from others that I was gay, I served for 14 more months during investigations and administrative actions to discharge me. Everyone knew, so, essentially, I lived for more than a year in a post-D.A.D.T. work environment.

During that time, I was part of a two-officer team planning our 4,000-soldier brigade’s redeployment from Iraq to Alaska. I did initial planning in relation to the Iraqi elections. I served for one year in the brigade’s planning cell in Alaska after return from deployment. The unit could have sent me somewhere else, but chose not to because they felt I made a critical contribution to the organization and they had always respected my work.

Four months after being found out, and 10 months prior to leaving the Army, I found myself with a boyfriend for the first time in my life, because I was no longer scared to have such a relationship. He and I attended social events and dinners with my peers. I talked about him at work. My life became one of full disclosure.

Amid all of that, the unit continued to function and I continued to be respected for the work I did. Many, from both companies I commanded, approached me to say that they didn’t care if I was gay — they thought I was one of the best commanders they’d ever had. And unbeknownst to me, many had guessed I was probably gay all along. Most didn’t care about my sexuality. I was accepted by most of them, as was my boyfriend, and I had never been happier in the military. Nothing collapsed, no one stopped talking to me, the Earth spun on its axis, and the unit prepared to fight another day.

There are parts of my story in the lives of all of the gay service members who continue to serve in our military — and there are 65,000, according to the Urban Institute. Their commitment is immense. So dedicated are they to service that they eschew the rights that every other soldier enjoys. Their road is more difficult than most people realize, and we reward their exceptionally dedicated and selfless service by undermining their ability to live a happy, honest, and fulfilling life — all of which would actually make them even better soldiers.

I wish that they could tell their own stories, but in a master-stroke of policy-making, they are under a gag order that prevents from discussing D.A.D.T.’s impact upon them, if they wish to keep their job serving their country. So I have tried to tell part of my story.

A Policy Without Credible Rationale
A remarkably consistent string of research reports have shown that there is no link between openly gay service members in the United States or foreign militaries having a negative effect on performance. Nevertheless, the “cohesion” argument remains the primary defense for the policy.

But in the most recent Gallup survey of American attitudes toward gays in the military, every demographic broadly supports gays serving openly. Among 18-year-olds to 29-year-olds — who make up the vast majority of the military force — support for overturning the current policy is at 79 percent.

What this shows, in fact, is that upon entrance into the military, we are indoctrinating an otherwise very accepting group of Americans to be more prejudiced than they were when they entered the military. Meanwhile, some leaders paradoxically argue that we cannot make the change because the force is not ready for it.

Using this logic, racial desegregation of the military would have happened in MY lifetime, not my grandfather’s, simply because an outspoken but small minority would remain opposed to it long after 1948. In that case, we made a change simply because it was right — and enforced the standards in a very rule-abiding military — through the virtue of leadership.

We spent very little time surveying our troops before desegregation, integration of women in the service, women at the military academies, women in fighter jets, women on aircraft carriers or submarines. The most instructive question whenever discrimination was an issue has always been simple: “Can this person do the job?”

The current D.A.D.T. policy deprives us of even being able to make an informed decision. It functions through ignorance, which begets stereotypes without fact. In turn that prejudice, from which good people are forced to suffer.

The words of Harvey Milk actually ring very true: “I would like to see every gay doctor come out, every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let that world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody would imagine.”

It is for this reason alone that supporters of discrimination seek to keep the truth hidden, gay service members in fear, and the current D.A.D.T. policy in effect. The only accomplishment of the policy is mandatory ignorance.

Jonathan Hopkins is a former United States Army captain who was honorably discharged in August 2010. Mr. Hopkins graduated fourth in his class at West Point. He was deployed three times to Iraq and Afghanistan, earning three Bronze Stars, including one for valor. He is now a graduate student at Georgetown University’s security studies program.

Constitution does not ban sex bias, Scalia says

From sfgate.com: "The U.S. Constitution does not outlaw sex discrimination or discrimination based on sexual orientation, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a law school audience in San Francisco on Friday.

"If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, you have legislatures," Scalia said during a 90-minute question-and-answer session with a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. He said the same was true of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The 74-year-old justice, leader of the court's conservative wing, is also its most outspoken advocate of "originalism," the doctrine that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original meaning of those who drafted it.

The court has ruled since the early 1970s that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws applies to sex discrimination, requiring a strong justification for any law that treated the genders differently. That interpretation, Scalia declared Friday, was not intended by the authors of the amendment that was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War.

"Nobody thought it was directed against sex discrimination," he said. Although gender bias "shouldn't exist," he said, the idea that it is constitutionally forbidden is "a modern invention."

The court has not applied the same exacting standard to discrimination based on sexual orientation, an issue it could reach in several cases now in lower courts, including the dispute over California's ban on same-sex marriage.

But when the justices overturned laws against gay sex in 2003 as a violation of personal autonomy and due process, Scalia dissented vehemently. He compared the anti-sodomy laws to statutes against incest and bestiality and said many Americans view bans on homosexual conduct as protections for themselves and their families against "a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."

Scalia said Friday he's not a purist and is generally willing to accept long-standing court precedents that contradict his views. One exception, he said, is abortion, in which he continues to advocate overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision and later rulings that have narrowed but not eliminated the constitutional right to terminate one's pregnancy.

He derided the court's 1992 Casey decision, which allowed states to restrict abortion as long as they did not place an "undue burden" on women's access to the procedure.

Having to decide whether a new staffing requirement for abortion facilities, for example, imposes an undue burden "puts me in the position of being a legislator rather than a judge," he said. "That's not law, and I won't do it."

He also described the legal underpinnings of the court's 1965 ruling declaring a constitutional right of privacy - the basis for Roe vs. Wade - as a "total absurdity."

Scalia is the longest-serving justice on the current court. He spoke to an auditorium filled with law students on the 24th anniversary of his unanimous Senate confirmation, after his appointment by President Ronald Reagan.

He said most of his views haven't changed since then, but one exception is the idea of allowing cameras in the court, which he supported when he was appointed. The issue resurfaced in January when a 5-4 majority, including Scalia, vetoed a federal judge's plan to allow closed-circuit televising of the same-sex-marriage trial in San Francisco.

"If I really thought it would educate the American people, I would remain in favor of it," he told the students. But instead of educational gavel-to-gavel coverage, he said, most people would see 30-second snippets on the nightly news that would "distort the public perception of the court."

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Montana GOP Policy: Make Homosexuality Illegal

From HuffingtonPost.com: "HELENA, Mont. — At a time when gays have been gaining victories across the country, the Republican Party in Montana still wants to make homosexuality illegal.

The party adopted an official platform in June that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997.

The fact that it's still the official party policy more than 12 years later, despite a tidal shift in public attitudes since then and the party's own pledge of support for individual freedoms, has exasperated some GOP members.

"I looked at that and said, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, said last week. "Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn't be in the Republican Party."

Gay rights have been rapidly advancing nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy law in 2003's Lawrence v. Texas decision. Gay marriage is now allowed in five states and Washington, D.C., a federal court recently ruled the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy unconstitutional, and even a conservative tea party group in Montana ousted its president over an anti-gay exchange in Facebook.

But going against the grain is the Montana GOP statement, which falls under the "Crime" section of the GOP platform. It states: "We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal."

Montana GOP executive director Bowen Greenwood said that has been the position of the party since the state Supreme Court struck down state laws criminalizing homosexuality in 1997 in the case of Gryczan v. Montana.

Nobody has ever taken the initiative to change it and so it's remained in the party platform, Greenwood said. The matter has never even come up for discussion, he said.

"There had been at the time, and still is, a substantial portion of Republican legislators that believe it is more important for the Legislature to make the law instead of the Supreme
The party adopted an official platform in June that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997.

The fact that it's still the official party policy more than 12 years later, despite a tidal shift in public attitudes since then and the party's own pledge of support for individual freedoms, has exasperated some GOP members.

"I looked at that and said, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, said last week. "Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn't be in the Republican Party."

Gay rights have been rapidly advancing nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy law in 2003's Lawrence v. Texas decision. Gay marriage is now allowed in five states and Washington, D.C., a federal court recently ruled the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy unconstitutional, and even a conservative tea party group in Montana ousted its president over an anti-gay exchange in Facebook.

But going against the grain is the Montana GOP statement, which falls under the "Crime" section of the GOP platform. It states: "We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal."

Montana GOP executive director Bowen Greenwood said that has been the position of the party since the state Supreme Court struck down state laws criminalizing homosexuality in 1997 in the case of Gryczan v. Montana.

Nobody has ever taken the initiative to change it and so it's remained in the party platform, Greenwood said. The matter has never even come up for discussion, he said.

"There had been at the time, and still is, a substantial portion of Republican legislators that believe it is more important for the Legislature to make the law instead of the Supreme Court," Greenwood said.

Story continues below
AdvertisementCritics say the policy is a toothless statement, the effect of which is simply to make gays feel excluded. A University of Montana law professor says Montana's 1997 case and the U.S. Supreme Court's Lawrence decision means there's no real chance for the state GOP to act on its position.

"To me, that statement legally is hollow," said constitutional specialist Jack Tuholske. "The principle under Gryczan and under Lawrence, that's the fundamental law of the land and the Legislature can't override the Constitution. It might express their view, but as far as a legal reality, it's a hollow view and can't come to pass."

Montana Human Rights Network organizer Kim Abbott said the GOP platform statement does not represent the attitudes of most Montanans, and it shows that the party is out of touch with the prevalent view of the people they are supposed to represent.

"It speaks volumes to the lesbian and gay community how they are perceived by the Republican Party," Abbott said. "It would be nice if Republicans that understand that gay people are human beings would stand up and say they don't agree with that. But I don't know how likely that is."

Brueggeman suspects that the vast majority of the party believes, as he does, that the Republican party should remove statement. It's against every conservative principle for limited government and issues like this exemplify how a political party can interfere with the relationship between lawmakers and their constituents.

"I just hope it's something that's so sensitive that people don't want to touch it," he said. "Even if there wasn't a Supreme Court decision, does anyone really believe that it should be illegal?"
Court," Greenwood said.

Lady Gaga Speaks Out on DADT

Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rights of Gays

From NYTimes.com: "The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay members of the military is unconstitutional, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military.

The rule limits the military’s ability to ask about the sexual orientation of service members, and allows homosexuals to serve, as long as they do not disclose their orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

“The don’t ask, don’t tell act infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members in many ways,” she wrote. “In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the don’t ask, don’t tell act was necessary to significantly further the government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden.”

The rule, she wrote in an 86-page opinion, has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.

The plaintiffs argued that the act violated the rights of service members in two ways.

First, they said, it violates their guarantee of substantive due process under the Fifth Amendment. The second restriction, the plaintiffs said, involves the free-speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment. Although those rights are diminished in the military, the judge wrote, the restrictions in the act still fail the constitutional test of being “reasonably necessary” to protect “a substantial government interest.”

The “sweeping reach” of the speech restrictions under the act, she said, “is far broader than is reasonably necessary to protect the substantial government interest at stake here.”

The decision is among a number of recent rulings that suggest a growing judicial skepticism about measures that discriminate against homosexuals, including rulings against California’s ban on same-sex marriage and a Massachusetts decision striking down a federal law forbidding the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage.

It will not change the policy right away; the judge called for the plaintiffs to submit a proposed injunction limiting the law by Sept. 16th. The defendants will submit their objections to the plan a week after that. Any decision would probably be stayed pending appeals.

The suit was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization. The group’s executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, pronounced himself “delighted” with the ruling, which he called “not just a win for Log Cabin Republican service members but all American service members.”

Those who would have preserved the rule were critical of the decision.

“It is hard to believe that a District Court-level judge in California knows more about what impacts military readiness than the service chiefs who are all on record saying the law on homosexuality in the military should not be changed,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative group. He called Judge Phillips a “judicial activist.”

As a candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama vowed to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Once elected, he remained critical of the policy but said it was the role of Congress to change the law; the Justice Department has continued to defend the law in court.

In February, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked Congress to allow gays to serve openly by repealing the law. The House has voted for repeal, but the Senate has not yet acted.

Richard Socarides, a lawyer who served as an adviser to the Clinton administration on gay issues when the policy was passed into law, said the legal action was long overdue. “The president has said he opposes the policy, yet he has defended it in court. Now that he’s lost, and resoundingly so, he must stop enforcing it.”

The case, which was heard in July, involved testimony from six military officers who had been discharged because of the policy. One, Michael Almy, was an Air Force major who was serving his third tour of duty in Iraq when someone using his computer found at least one message to a man discussing homosexual conduct.

Another plaintiff, John Nicholson, was going through training for intelligence work in the Army and tried to conceal his sexual orientation by writing to a friend in Portuguese. A fellow service member who was also fluent in that language, however, read the letter on his desk and rumors spread throughout his unit.

When Mr. Nicholson asked a platoon sergeant to help quash the rumors, the sergeant instead informed his superiors, who initiated discharge proceedings.

Shame on you Ken Mehlman - Former GOP Chairman & Bush 2004 Campaign Manager Admits He is Gay After Running Anti-Gay Campaign

From RawStory.com: "Ken Mehlman, the erstwhile chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for George W. Bush's 2004 reelection effort, has come out of the closet as gay in a column published in The Atlantic.
Mehlman came out in a column by Mark Ambinder on the website of The Atlantic, after the blogger who outed former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and onetime Virginia congressman Ed Schrock revealed that Ambinder was to publish the story. Blogger Michael Rogers was the subject of the documentary "Outrage," a film about outing gays in government who have used their positions of power to advocate against gay issues, which aired earlier this year on HBO.

Mehlman, 44, spearheaded the Bush re-election campaign. The campaign used aggressively anti-gay tactics, including the mailing of a flyer in some states which suggested liberals would allow gay marriage and ban the Bible. Some believe Bush’s support for anti-gay marriage measures carried him to victory, particularly in Ohio, which had a gay marriage measure on the ballot.
According to the Atlantic's Ambinder, "Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would be asked about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8."

Target CEO is Clueless: Refuses HRC Request for Donation After Making Making Anti-Gay Donation

From Politico.com: Target Corp., for now, has rejected demand from the Human Rights Campaign that the retailer donate to pro-gay rights candidates in order to balance its contribution to a group backing Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, an ardent opponent of gay marriage.

In a statement released Monday, HRC President Joe Solmonese said “all fair-minded Americans will now rightly question Target’s commitment to equality.”

The company maintained it fully supports the gay and lesbian community, but decided to keep its options open to avoid the appearance that it made a political donation as the result of outside pressure, “given the current political and emotionally charged environment” surrounding the election.

“We believe that it is impossible to avoid turning any further actions into a political issue and will use the benefit of time to make thoughtful, careful decisions on how best to move forward,” according to a statement the company issued Monday.

HRC and MoveOn.org, a liberal political action group, have spearheaded petition drives and a boycott of Target since it became public that the retail chain gave $150,000 to a business group backing Emmer, a conservative who also has angered the progressive community for his positions on abortion and birth control.

The donation, which came from Target’s business account rather than an internal political action committee, was made possible by a controversial Supreme Court decision issued earlier this year that overturned a long-standing ban on corporate political activity.

Target officials have said they gave to the newly formed business group, MN Forward, to show support for Emmer’s record on economic issues and because he appeared to be the strongest pro-business candidate in the race.

After employees and outside groups complained, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel issued memos to his workers explaining his motivation for the donation and apologizing if it upset them. He also reiterated the company’s commitment to equal rights within the workplace and its sponsorship of gay rights events in Minnesota.

But MoveOn and HRC weren’t satisfied. HRC had hoped to convince the firm to donate $150,000 to pro-gay rights candidates and groups in Minnesota to “make right” its support for Emmer. After weeks of negotiations, HRC officials said Monday that the talks had broken down without a deal.

HRC said it will devote $150,000 of its resources to defeat Emmer. And MoveOn members are still calling for a boycott of the national chain that had nurtured strong ties to the gay community through its store locations, marketing and nondiscriminatory employee benefits program.

In addition, Solmonese said the gay community is now pressuring Best Buy Co. Inc., which donated $100,000 to MN Forward’s pro-Emmer advertising campaign. Like Target, Best Buy receives one of the highest corporate rankings for workplace equality issues from the HRC.

While nodding to those rankings, Solmonese said that “before they can regain that exalted status among their consumers, they need to make things right in Minnesota.”

Is Obama's position on gay marriage sustainable?

From The Plume Line: "That seems to be one of the core political questions in the wake of the overturning of Proposition 8. How can the president continue opposing gay marriage while supporting the decision to strike down Prop 8, on the grounds that it's "discriminatory," as the White House said in a statement last night?

Making it more dicey, the White House statement also said that the president continues to push for "full equality" for gay and lesbian couples. How can that not include support for gay marriage?

This morning, senior White House adviser David Axelrod struggled to defend this position on MSNBC. Here's what he said:

"The president opposed Proposition 8 at the time. He felt that it was divisive. He felt that it was mean-spirited, and he opposed it at the time. So we reiterated that position yesterday. The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control. He's supports civil unions, and that's been his position throughout. So nothing has changed."

But as John Aravosis says, everything has changed.

Here's another problem: In the interview with MSNBC this morning, Axelrod clarified that Obama believes that gay marriage is an issue for states to decide, and it's true that Obama opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, which codified a federal ban on gay marriage.

But as Michael Shear notes, his administration has yet to actively seek a repeal of DOMA, and is acquiescing to Congressional leaders who insist that the current political reality dictates that repeal is impossible. And his administration continues to defend DOMA in court against appeals.

Also: Obama has in the past claimed there's no inconsistency between opposing Prop 8 and opposing gay marriage by arguing he thinks gay marriage is wrong but we shouldn't be prohibiting it legally.


"When you're playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about," he said in a 2008 MTV interview. "Usually constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them."

But DOMA does just this, and while Obama opposes it, actively moving to repeal is what would turn this argument from mere eloquence to reality.

The problem for the White House is that the Prop 8 decision will force this issue onto full boil nationally, just as the Arizona law did with illegal immigration. And heading into his 2012 reelection campaign, the gay and lesbian community -- an important Dem constiuency -- will be demanding full support for gay marriage, and a repeal of DOMA.

They'll be demanding complete consistency, and won't want to be lectured about what is and isn't possible amid some arbitrarily defined "political reality."


By Greg Sargent | August 5, 2010; 12:38 PM ET

Marriage is a Constitutional Right

From NYTimes.com: "Until Wednesday, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married did so because a state judge or Legislature allowed them to. The nation’s most fundamental guarantees of freedom, set out in the Constitution, were not part of the equation. That has changed with the historic decision by a federal judge in California, Vaughn Walker, that said his state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the 14th Amendment’s rights to equal protection and due process of law.

The decision, though an instant landmark in American legal history, is more than that. It also is a stirring and eloquently reasoned denunciation of all forms of irrational discrimination, the latest link in a chain of pathbreaking decisions that permitted interracial marriages and decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults.
As the case heads toward appeals at the circuit level and probably the Supreme Court, Judge Walker’s opinion will provide a firm legal foundation that will be difficult for appellate judges to assail.

The case was brought by two gay couples who said California’s Proposition 8, which passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote, discriminated against them by prohibiting same-sex marriage and relegating them to domestic partnerships. The judge easily dismissed the idea that discrimination is permissible if a majority of voters approve it; the referendum’s outcome was “irrelevant,” he said, quoting a 1943 case, because “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”

He then dismantled, brick by crumbling brick, the weak case made by supporters of Proposition 8 and laid out the facts presented in testimony. The two witnesses called by the supporters (the state having bowed out of the case) had no credibility, he said, and presented no evidence that same-sex marriage harmed society or the institution of marriage.

Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in their ability to form successful marital unions and raise children, he said. Though procreation is not a necessary goal of marriage, children of same-sex couples will benefit from the stability provided by marriage, as will the state and society. Domestic partnerships confer a second-class status. The discrimination inherent in that second-class status is harmful to gay men and lesbians. These findings of fact will be highly significant as the case winds its way through years of appeals.

One of Judge Walker’s strongest points was that traditional notions of marriage can no longer be used to justify discrimination, just as gender roles in opposite-sex marriage have changed dramatically over the decades. All marriages are now unions of equals, he wrote, and there is no reason to restrict that equality to straight couples. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage,” he wrote. “That time has passed.”

To justify the proposition’s inherent discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation, he wrote, there would have to be a compelling state interest in banning same-sex marriage. But no rational basis for discrimination was presented at the two-and-a-half-week trial in January, he said. The real reason for Proposition 8, he wrote, is a moral view “that there is something wrong with same-sex couples,” and that is not a permissible reason for legislation.

“Moral disapproval alone,” he wrote, in words that could someday help change history, “is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women.”

The ideological odd couple who led the case — Ted Olson and David Boies, who fought against each other in the Supreme Court battle over the 2000 election — were criticized by some supporters of same-sex marriage for moving too quickly to the federal courts. Certainly, there is no guarantee that the current Supreme Court would uphold Judge Walker’s ruling. But there are times when legal opinions help lead public opinions.

Just as they did for racial equality in previous decades, the moment has arrived for the federal courts to bestow full equality to millions of gay men and lesbians. "

Grandmother supports boycott of Target

Sonoma County CA Pays for Shameful Treatment of Gay Couple

From Change.org:
A few years ago the County of Sonoma in California showed its despicable and ignorant hand when it physically separated and isolated Clay Greene from his injured partner Harold Scull, seized the men's possessions, sold those items at auction, forced them into separate nursing facilities and denied them their due legal rights and protection. As this story went viral in April 2010, the general response both here at change.org and around the country was palpable and appropriate outrage. A lawsuit against the County of Sonoma, along with Agua Caliente Villa, the nursing home where Greene was forced to live, commenced immediately, alleging about 50 counts of various, heinous crimes.

And now, months later, Sonoma County has tucked its tail between its legs and skulked away from what was surely going to be a terrible trial, and settled out of court. In retribution for all their sins, the County will pay $600,000 to Harold and Clay's estate (with almost half of that going to attorney's fees ... why do I not practice law again?). Agua Caliente will pay an additional $53,000.

So that's all well and good, I guess. Money can't ever erase the three tortuous months the two men spent apart, stripped of their home, their dignity, and their partnership before Harold died alone in a nursing home. It can't replace the possessions, gathered over a 20 year relationship, that the county wrongfully seized and then sold at auction. It can't undo the emotional hurt. At this point, all Sonoma County has to give is money, so it'll have to do.

But Sonoma County has learned the error of its ways — either to simply cover its ass in the future or to be a kinder, gentler county, who knows? — and is also implementing new procedures for its workers to avoid this kind of intolerant behavior in the future. This is, perhaps, the best news. They can't really fix the enormous injury they inflicted upon Clay Greene, but they can damn sure never inflict it on anyone else.

Wouldn't it have been nice if Sonoma County had an inclusive policy already in place? Sure. It would have been nice if Jackson Memorial had a gay friendly visitation code long before Lisa Pond was admitted. It would have been great if the Itawamba School District had a strict no bullying policy way before Candace McMillan was even a student. It would have been even better if the Defense of Marriage Act was a thing of the past. But we don't live in that world. Yet.

To Clay Greene I say this: I am so sorry you had to go through what you and Harold had to go through. I can't imagine the level of pain and sorrow you both felt. Perhaps, because of you, and those like you who were boldly empowered to speak out at a time when the system beat you down, I won't ever know it.

Why is the Military Polling Troops About Gays?

From Time.com:
When Harry Truman wanted to integrate blacks into the U.S. military in 1948, he simply ordered it done. When the Navy wanted women on ships beginning in 1978, it commanded its admirals to do so. When the Clinton Pentagon decided women should become fighter pilots, it issued orders telling the military to make it happen. For generations, the military mind-set has been, If we want you to have an opinion, we'll issue you one. So why is the Pentagon asking troops how they'll feel if forced to serve alongside openly gay comrades?

"This is a very dangerous precedent," says Lawrence Korb, who ran the Pentagon's personnel office during the Reagan Administration. "It gives the troops the feeling that they have a veto over what the top people want." Not everyone agrees. "What matters is the morale of the force in the field," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and military scholar. "The survey is an honest attempt to suss out what the effects on morale might be."
(See a brief history of gays in the military.)

But even a top officer acknowledges some unease. "We've never done this," Admiral Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said in February after Pentagon leaders endorsed ending "Don't ask, don't tell" and said they would survey the troops about it. "We've never assessed the force because it is not our practice to go within our military and poll our force to determine if they like the laws of the land or not," he told an activist from the University of California's Palm Center, which monitors the issue. "I mean, that gets you into [a] very difficult regime."
(See the case of a murdered sailor.)

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, says the poll is simply a political tool designed to ease a decision that would be better made quickly. Instead, it's part of a prolonged process that polarizes those involved and hurts both national security and gays. "If we were asking questions about any other identity group — Would your wife mind living on post next to a Chinese family?, Would you take orders from a Baptist officer?, Would you mind serving alongside an African American? — these kinds of questions make those groups second-class citizens," he says.

But the polling and a Pentagon study now under way — after President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and the House all have declared the ban should end (the Senate is expected to do so soon) — does serve a purpose. "We've had to do these political somersaults," Belkin says, "involving a basically fake study process, in order to give the Pentagon a sense that they have some buy-in." Gates said Thursday that it's "very important for us to understand from our men and women in uniform the challenges that they see" accompanying such a change, and added that the survey is "being done in a very professional way."
(Read TIME's 1991 article "Marching Out of the Closet.")

But the confidential survey, sent out via e-mail last week to 400,000 active and reserve troops, is already controversial. Gay-advocacy groups obtained copies of the poll Friday and it quickly flew around the Internet. The survey "stokes the fires of homophobia by its very design, and will only make the Pentagon's responsibility to subdue homophobia as part of this inevitable policy change even harder," said Alexander Nicholson of Servicemembers United, a former Army interrogator who was discharged under the existing "Don't ask, don't tell" legislation. He complained that the survey uses "bias-inducing" words "such as the clinical term homosexual," and focused too much on the negative implications of repeal. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell called such criticism "nonsense."
(Comment on this story.)

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, perhaps the leading gay-rights group dealing with "Don't ask, don't tell," took a tough line against the survey. "No survey of the troops should be done," director Aubrey Sarvis said Friday. "Surveying the troops is unprecedented — it did not happen in 1948 when President Truman ended segregation and it did not happen in 1976 when the service academies opened to women. Even when the military placed women on ships at sea, the Pentagon did not turn to a survey on how to bring about that cultural change."

Troops have until Aug. 15 to complete the survey, which asks some 100 questions about how troops would feel serving alongside openly gay comrades or commanders. ("If 'Don't ask, don't tell' is repealed and you are working with a service member in your immediate unit who has said he or she is gay or lesbian, how, if at all, would it affect your immediate unit's effectiveness at completing its mission?" asks a typical question. The six multiple-choice answers range from "Very positively" to "Very negatively" and also include "No effect.") A second confidential survey, assessing how 150,000 family members feel about the prospective repeal, is slated for next month.

Congress passed "Don't ask, don't tell" in 1993 to thwart President Clinton's bid to lift a ban on gays serving openly. Until then, the White House had unilaterally barred open gays from serving in uniform. Under the 1993 law, recruits were no longer asked if they were gay ("don't ask"). They could serve so long as they kept their mouths shut about their private lives ("don't tell"). It was a crude compromise, which still allowed the military to kick out nearly 14,000 troops, including more than 400 last year while the nation was waging two wars.

But the public mood has shifted since 1993, when only 44% of the public supported openly gay men and women in uniform. It's now supported by 75%, according to a Washington Post poll. But never mind newspaper polls. Korb, the former Pentagon personnel chief now at the Center for American Progress think tank, is more concerned over what might happen if military surveys like this catch on. "Are they going to poll the troops on whether they want happy hours or discount cigarettes?" he asks. "Where does it stop — should we get out of Afghanistan?"



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2003075,00.html?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29#ixzz0tV8OA5RU

Obama Can't Shake Gay Rights Fight

From Politico.com:
By: Josh Gerstein
July 10, 2010 07:03 AM EDT

When President Barack Obama agreed to back legislation in May that could eventually repeal the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, the resolution seemed to offer twin benefits for the White House:

Quell the anger of gay activists who accused Obama of foot-dragging on the issue, and allow the question of gays in the military to cool for a while, perhaps until after the November election.

That didn’t last long.

The issue leapt back into the news this week after the Pentagon sent a survey to 400,000 troops to assess their attitudes on whether openly gay soldiers should be allowed to serve — with questions being criticized by gay rights advocates as inaccurate, inflammatory and biased.

Next week, a lawsuit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans is going to trial in California — and Obama’s Justice Department is in the uncomfortable position of trying to prevent the "don't ask, don't tell" policy from being overturned as discharged veterans testify about its dramatic impact on their careers.

Some gay rights activists who were cheered by Obama’s decision in May now say they’re frustrated by what feels like a two steps forward, one step back approach to the issue — especially in light of Obama’s delay in seeking to repeal of the policy in the first place.

“This has got to be a nightmare for the White House political office, especially as Organizing for America ramps up efforts to rebuild a coalition for the midterms which includes gays,” said Richard Socarides, a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay rights issues. “I want the Democrats to keep both houses of Congress more than most. It’s very important that we do that if gay rights are important to you. So I can’t understand why the president’s senior advisers permit the Justice Department to defend this case. … It’s incomprehensible.”

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the White House declined to comment for this story. However, officials have said that Justice is obligated to defend any law Congress passes as long as there is a plausible legal basis to do so, even if the current administration disagrees with the statute.

Some lawyers in the gay rights movement scoff at that. They note that from time to time, Justice has refused to stand behind laws under challenge as unconstitutional. For instance, in 2005, the Justice Department declined to defend a law barring the D.C. Metro transit system from accepting ads that promote legalizing marijuana.

For the attorneys from the Justice Department’s Civil Division assigned to handle the Log Cabin case, it’s essentially a Catch-22. If they get tough or confrontational with the ex-service-members or experts called to testify, the government lawyers risk being accused of insensitivity.

If they hold back, Republicans and social conservatives could accuse the administration of taking a dive in a case it never really wanted to win.

“This is a pincer” for the government’s lawyers, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. However, he didn’t have much sympathy. “It comes with the territory,” he said.

Even ahead of the Log Cabin case, conservative Republicans have been attacking Obama on gay rights as well, insisting that the Justice Department isn’t really trying very hard to defend the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy.


During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested that the Justice Department wasn’t going all-out to fight lawsuits against the gays-in-the-military policy, and over a law denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages, the Defense of Marriage Act.

Kagan denied the charge. “I have acted in the solicitor general's office consistently with the responsibility, which I agree with you very much that I have, to vigorously defend all statutes, including the statute that embodies the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy,” Kagan said.

A federal judge’s rulings Thursday holding part of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional triggered a round of complaints from conservatives that the Obama administration was making a politically correct and less-than-forceful defense of that law.

“The Justice Department’s half-hearted defense in this case — exemplified by DOJ’s own attorney asserting that President Obama opposes DOMA — is unacceptable. The president’s personal views have nothing to do with the defense of a law passed by Congress,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

Gillers said, though, that government attorneys were not obliged to rip apart the opposition the way a private litigator might. “Because you’re a government lawyer, you’re not given the same deference to be a junkyard dog for that client,” he said. “A government lawyer has a broader mandate.”

Written briefs in gay-rights-related cases have already landed the Justice Department in hot water with the Obama White House after gay activists complained the filings compared same-sex marriage to forms of incest and marriages involving minors. Sources say some filings in such cases are now coordinated with White House lawyers.

But the give-and-take of live courtroom testimony is even more treacherous and can’t be vetted so easily from Washington. The lead lawyer for the Log Cabin group, Dan Woods of White & Case in Los Angeles, said he expects the trial to stretch for two weeks and involve testimony by seven expert witnesses and as many as six former service members. Justice Department lawyers have said they plan to call no witnesses at the bench trial to be held before Judge Virginia Phillips, without a jury, Woods said.

With the new Pentagon survey under fire for its questions about open-bay showers and even its use of the term “homosexual,” it is almost certain that Justice Department lawyers handling the Log Cabin case will be accused of asking insensitive or homophobic questions as they cross-examine witnesses.


On the other side of the political spectrum, social conservatives say they’ll be watching closely to see whether DOJ is going easy. “We hope the administration’s politically motivated position against 'don’t ask, don’t tell' will not be a factor in defending the regulations,” said Daniel Blomberg of the Alliance Defense Fund.

The political minefield the trial presents may be one reason the Justice Department has tried mightily to head it off.

Last month, government lawyers asked Phillips to put the case on hold indefinitely because of the steps Congress took in May toward a repeal of the "don’t ask" statute passed in 1993. On May 27, the House voted, 234-194, in favor of a measure that would repeal "don’t ask" next year if top military leaders certify the repeal can be carried out without impacting force readiness and unit cohesion. On the same day, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted, 16-12, for the same language.

However, the judge noted that the bills involved have not cleared Congress and that the repeal depends on several actions by the military and Obama that may or may not happen. “Given the many contingencies involved — including the threshold contingency of congressional approval — and the lack of clear timelines, any ultimate repeal that may result from this legislation is at this point remote, if not wholly speculative,” Phillips wrote Tuesday as she ordered the trial to go forward.

Government lawyers also have asked Phillips to deny a trial as unnecessary, to exclude all of the expert witnesses and most of the other witnesses. Phillips, a Clinton appointee, denied all the motions.

Woods pointed to one specific episode that he said highlighted the contradictions in the government’s case. He said the plaintiffs asked the government to admit that Obama said last year that "don’t ask" weakens national security and that the statement is true. The government admitted Obama made the comment but declined to say whether it was true. After a judge required the government to answer, it denied Obama’s assertion.

“They keep saying they have no choice but to defend the law because it is the law and that’s their job at the Justice Department, but the hypocrisy of this emerges all the time,” Woods said. “They are in a very awkward position.”

There are a few breaks for the administration in the trial set to start this week. The location in Riverside, Calif., far from Washington’s political press, should diminish coverage. And the ban on cameras in federal trial courts means TV coverage will have to rely on courtroom sketches.

But the gay Republicans who filed the case back in 2004 are doing their best to keep the legal and public pressure on the Obama administration. The Log Cabin group said Friday that Woods plans a daily press availability after the trial session, that principals in the case will be readily available to the media, and that the group plans a daily bulletin on trial developments.

Montana GOP seeks to ‘keep homosexual acts illegal

From ThinkProgress.org: "Andy Towle is reporting that like the Texas GOP, the Montana Republican Party has adopted a platform that would criminalize “homosexual acts”:

Homosexual Acts

We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

Ironically, the platform uses some form of the word “constitutional” at least 10 times and even argues that constitutionality should be decided by the states. But the Montana Supreme Court struck down the State’s sodomy law in 1997 and ruled that it violated the constitutional right to privacy. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Lawrence v. Texas that Texas’ “Homosexual Conduct” law — a measure outlawing oral and anal sex — unconstitutional. The Court ruled that the Texas statute “making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause.” “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons,” the Court ruled in a 6-3 ruling."