Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
February 22nd, 2010
Jamie Kirchick reports that Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will introduce a bill into the Senate that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on open LGBT people serving in the military. By all rights, this bill should have the wind at its back. A new CNN poll shows that 69 percent of the public favors repealing DADT, including 62 percent of registered Republicans. But in the current political climate in which the minority would fillibuster the sun’s rising in the morning and force the Democratics to consider exempting Nebraska from the earth-rotation mandate, I have a feeling it won’t see smooth sailing.
February 20th, 2010
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” supporters have often defended their support by saying they were only following the advice of top military leaders. Now that military leaders are coming out in favor of repealing the ban on gay servicemenbers serving openly, former Sen. Rick Santorum says we shouldn’t trust the generals:
Addressing how the military leadership, led by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, could now favor a repeal of the law, Santorum raised the specter of brainwashing.
“Political correctness is reigning in the military right now,” he said. “”Some people say: [Do] whatever the generals say [on DADT]. I’m not too sure that we haven’t so indoctrinated the officer corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decision.”
The line went over well with the CPAC crowd.
Really? Somehow I missed that on GayPatriot’s and GOProud’s Twitter stream. But Bruce Carroll does defend Rick “Man-On-Dog” Santorum as being “not homophobic.” Right. Because you’d have to be brainwashed to believe otherwise.
February 19th, 2010
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley spoke yesterday to the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium and Technology Exposition. He addressed the issue of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and appears to have spoken as though its repeal is a foregone conclusion.
The Air Force website and the Air Force Times have a slightly different report and a transcript of the speech is not available so I am gleaning what I can.
“The president as commander in chief has answered the question of whether this legislative change will be pursued, and the answer is ‘yes,\'” Donley told the several hundred airmen who came to hear him speak. “We know this will be an issue of interest to all airmen and is certain to generate much discussion.”
Donley warned the audience that the Air Force cannot be “pulled into the political debate” and that it should “add light and not heat to the discussion.”
Beyond legal issues, Donley said, the Air Force will advise the Pentagon on how repeal of the law could affect unit cohesion and military readiness.
“Congress will be listening to what the military has to say,” he said.
“A working group chaired by the DOD general counsel will examine all aspects of properly implementing a repeal to the current law with recommendations in areas such as housing, benefits and other policies to be completed by the end of this calendar year,” Secretary Donley said. “For the services and our Air Force, this is a test of whether we can have a professional and dispassionate conversation, develop the facts related to implementation, and appropriately advise the president and Congress without being involved in the political debate that surrounds this issue.”
The secretary noted the Air Force will endeavor to “add light, not heat, to this debate.”
It appears to me that Donley will not be giving any testimony that contradicts the intentions of the President and the Joint Chiefs Chairman to repeal the policy. The Air Force, it seems, will limit its involvement to discussions about implementation.
But in the meanwhile, expulsions will continue to be processed.
“We are continuing to process those cases,” Donley replied when asked whether the service would wait to act until the Defense Department finishes its assessment, which should be in 45 days.
February 19th, 2010
The Alliance Defense Fund has released a copy of a letter which they claim was sent to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and in which they oppose the proposed change to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Supporters of ADF should hope they are bluffing and never sent the letter. Not only is their argument irrational, but the letter itself would get a failing mark in a sixth grade English class.
Here at Box Turtle Bulletin we occasionally make mistakes. Sometimes we misspell a word, get a reference wrong, or flub grammar (and are subjected to the resulting scorn). But we aren’t writing to the White House, and we don’t have paid proof-readers. However, ADF is supposed to be comprised of lawyers, with staff to review, so there’s just no excuse for the ADF’s laughably amateur letter.
So as to help them avoid future mockery, let me share a few tips on letter writing to ADF:
1. When writing to try and influence a powerful person, try to get their name right.
2. If you want mail to arrive, address it properly – even the “cc’s”
I mean, really guys, it’s right there on the Department of Defense website. You can cut and paste it.
And while we’re at it, you only need to put “cc:” on the letter one time. Adding it in front of one name halfway down the list isn’t necessary.
3. Try and present your arguments in a consistent pattern
If you are numerating several points, use wording consistently. Don’t use “Whether chaplains could” three times but select “Whether chaplains can be allowed to” when there is no difference in meaning to be distinguished by different wording.
4. Try to avoid nonsensical and grammatically flawed language.
For example, the following sentence purports to introduce a “consequence”, but instead asks a question (which was not punctuated with a question mark):
That is a Constitutional offense that carries a very pragmatic consequence: just what will happen to recruiting efforts if Christians become second-class soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines.
And this sentence makes no sense whatsoever:
We urge you to reconsider your decision and avoid this collision with America’s most cherished and fundamental freedom of religious liberty.
What is “America’s most cherished and fundamental freedom of religious liberty?” It is the freedom to keep gays from the Military? Is it the freedom of chaplains to preach against “homosexual behavior?”
Or perhaps they were trying to say “American’s most cherished and fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”
We’ll never know.
5. And finally, try not to introduce off-subject and irrelevant matters into your conclusion.
After four pages of discussion about chaplains and “homosexual behavior”, ADF provided this, their second to last paragraph:
In fact, it is more than plausible that forcing the military to affirm homosexual behavior will prove unwise. Recently, hundreds of religious leaders in civil life—including many from the faith communities that supply many military chaplains—declared their reasoned and conscientious opposition to the normalization of homosexual behavior through the artifice of same-sex “marriage.” This opposition is deeply rooted in the theology of the faith communities represented by the signatories, and such conscientious opposition will come to a sharp head within a military that compels affirmation of homosexual behavior.
Huh?
How, exactly, does (sect specific) religious opposition to civil marriage relate to gay personnel in the military? ADF never tells us, other than to suggest that it has something to do being “unwise”. Or perhaps ADF is assuming that anything gay relates to everything gay, though polls on marriage and military service certainly show otherwise.
Ugh.
Who wrote this thing? And why on earth would they actually consider sending it?
I guess that we can all just be glad that when it comes to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, our opposition is addicted to appearing like blithering idiots.
February 19th, 2010
One of the things I truly hate about political advocacy is the tendency of activists to veer towards hyperbole. The “what if” exceptions become the arguments of likelihood or commonality. The minor and slightly inconvenient are expressed in terms of extreme hardship or catastrophic abuse.
But sometimes claims and statements reach beyond rhetoric and oratorical posturing and jump straight to the irrational or the bizarre. And the claims made by the anti-gay legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund, about the unconstitutionality of allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military are an example.
On Wednesday, ADF issued a letter to President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates stating their position:
… if Chaplains with beliefs that contradict the proposed policy [allowing service of openly gay men and women] are kept from roles that are likely to generate conflict – like preaching or counseling – then they, the faith groups they represent, and the soldiers whose religious beliefs they serve will all be marginalized. The military would effectively establish preferred religions or religious beliefs. This is a Constitutional offense that carries a very pragmatic consequence: just what will happen to recruiting efforts if Christians become second-class soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines.
Setting aside the atrocious grammar, misspellings and errors that are abundant in this letter, let’s look at the logic which ADF displayed. Here is their argument:
This is so nutty that I can’t help but wonder if they even really sent this; surely they know that it would be an embarrassment.
First, the policy has nothing to do with “homosexual behavior”. Anti-gay activists always term their opposition in language of “behavior”, seeking to link every gay issue to “wiggling a penis in excrement“. The way that they get around this military ban being on identity is to define the act of identifying oneself as gay as being “homosexual behavior”. And a change in policy to allow open service has nothing to do with “affirmation.” The military allows its personnel many freedoms that they never “affirm.”
And, as ADF well knows, chaplains are free to preach according to their faith, to counsel on whatever they believe is appropriate, and to encourage such standards of personal morality as they think are appropriate. Any chaplain would be free to tell a soldier, “I think you should give up homosexual sex” just as freely as he is able to tell him, “I think you should give up premarital sex”, or “I think you should give up drinking.” To claim otherwise is disingenuous.
Our military is religiously diverse. And chaplains have found ways to minister to those who disagree on a whole host of issues without having to choose ‘to obey God or men.’
No Catholic chaplain is required to offer sacraments to Wiccans. No Baptist chaplain is required to say the prayers at Seder. Lutheran chaplains need not discuss the truths found in the Book of Mormon, and Pentecostals need not hear confession. But yet they all find a way to meet the spiritual needs – and often just the need for a sympathetic ear and comforting counsel – of folks whom their doctrines declare to be godless sinners dangling over the fires of hell.
It is an insult to chaplains to assume that they can work with Muslims and atheists and newly-converted pacifists, can counsel agnostics and Greek Orthodox and Reform Jews, can worship with Quakers and Pentecostals and Seventh Day Adventists all without losing their religious freedoms, but if a gay person is in the camp then it all goes out the window.
And finally, the ADF makes the outlandish assumption that the military must accommodate the anti-gay chaplains without any concern for pro-gay chaplains. They ignore the hundreds of chaplains from mainline Christianity or Judaism who believe in civil equality as a matter of the justice provisions of their faith.
Truly, they have it backwards. To establish military policy to accommodate the religious teachings of anti-gay chaplains while disdaining the religious teachings of others, would be an act of establishing religion. To say that we cannot allow gay people in the military because some chaplains are entitled to dictate the military’s official theology would be an unconscionable slur on the intents and purposes of the First Amendment.
February 19th, 2010
Die-hard supporters of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military’s ban on LGBT people serving openly, held a news conference at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 18 in Washington, DC. It was a truly priceless exercise in surrealism that has to be seen to believe.
Here are my favorites. Tom Minnery of Focus On the Family thinks repealing DADT is a bad idea, but not because he dislikes gay people. In fact, he’s worried all to pieces over what repealing DADT would do to gay men:
There are going to be a number of young gay men who have been shoved in the middle of this social engineering debacle and told that it is their right to serve. In the confines of barracks life, the sexual tension that will result when you try to develop a warrior culture and put these two very different ideas of sexuality in the middle of that culture, it’s going to produce a lot of abuse, a lot of angry, a lot of severely disappointed young gay men.
Tony Perkins, of the Family “Research” Council has a hard time with polling data:
When you look at the polling data of the sixty percent of Americans or whatever saying they thing that homosexuals should be open, should be able to serve openly in the military, well do they really understand the conditions under which their sons and daughters and their neighbor’s kids would have to serve in.
People understand the conditions of war very well, and nobody understands it better than those who are in the military currently. The Military Times finds that there has been a sharp decline in the percentage of men and women currently in uniform supporting DADT. Fewer still who personally know a gay person serving are willing to report them to their command.
But the most surreal statement comes from Retired Admiral James “Ace” Lyons:
You know in the Navy in the late nineteen hundreds, homosexuality was rampant in the United States Navy. It was so bad that mothers would not let their sons enlist in the Navy until the Navy cleaned its act up, and fortunately they did. …On board ship the Navy found that there are three things unacceptable to good order and discipline and its impact on readiness. You cannot have a thief aboard, you cannot have a drug-user or a drug-pusher, and we found out you could not have a homosexual.
And as anyone who has ever been to Fleet Week in San Francisco, New York, San Diego and Ft. Lauderdale can tell you, they don’t have any homosexuals in the Navy anymore.
February 16th, 2010
Admiral Mullen went to Jordan expecting troops in the field to have concerns over his decision to move in the direction of repealing the military’s anti-gay Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. He didn’t find any. (McClatchy)
Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nearing the end of a 25-minute question and answer session with troops serving here when he raised a topic of his own: “No one’s asked me about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'” he said.
As it turned out, none of the two dozen or so men or women who met with Mullen at Marine House in the Jordanian capital Tuesday had any questions on the 17-year-old policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military — or Mullen’s public advocacy of its repeal.
It seems that the soldiers had already moved on.
At Tuesday’s session, which included not only Marines, but members of the Army and the Air Force, both male and female service members explained why they were nonplussed by the issue: They’d already served with gays and lesbians, they accepted that some kind of change was imminent, and, they said, the nation was too engulfed in two wars for a prolonged debate about it.
February 16th, 2010
As we noted on the 7th, the Military Times (of which the Air Force Times is a part), has conducted their annual polling about the attitudes or its readership on the issue of open service by gay men and women. While the readership of this publication is conservative and not representative of military personnel at large, trends between years are interesting, as are demographic breakouts.
Our presentation was initial analysis of raw data and we did not delve deeply into the subgroups in the survey. The Air Force Times has released an article which adds additional texture to the limited picture that this non-representative poll presents.
Service members\’ responses were similar when separated by age or rank. The Military Times survey showed opposition to open service was slightly lower among the junior enlisted paygrades of E-1 through E-4 — whose ranks account for nearly half of the armed forces — as well as among racial minorities.
But the difference in responses by gender were stark — more than twice as many women as men (55 percent to 27 percent) support allowing gays to serve openly.
The survey showed noticeable differences by service as well. Marines were the most likely to oppose open service by gays, according to the Military Times survey, with 64 percent holding that view, compared with 52 percent of soldiers, 48 percent of airmen and 45 percent of sailors.
The Times also spoke with personnel to see what concerns they had. Perhaps the most telling was that those who expressed support for repealing the policy has personal experiences in which they knew a gay soldier who served a function that was essential to their task.
Robinson\’s support for repeal goes back to his days as a lieutenant, when he was part of a 12-member team manning an observation post in Macedonia in 1996. They were out on the edge, self-sustaining, with resupply every three weeks. So they cooked their own meals.
But only one troop, a sergeant, could cook — and he was part of the patrol rotation. “We wanted that guy to be the cooking guy, and I got with my sergeant and I said, ‘What do you say we make old Sgt. X kind of the permanent cook?\'” Robinson said. “So he doesn\’t have to go on patrol, and when we come back, we eat well. And everybody was like, yeah, why didn\’t we think of this three months ago?”
The sergeant\’s cooking skills, however, were not the only thing that made him stand out in the minds of his teammates.
“We thought this guy was homosexual” because of the way he carried himself, Robinson said.
“Everybody kind of thought it, but nobody ever really talked about it. But I asked myself, as a lieutenant, ‘What would I think if he told me he was gay?\’ This was before people were talking about this openly in the military. This was a tank battalion.
“And I thought I\’d probably be uncomfortable with it for a minute, and then I\’d be like, oh, yeah, OK.”
He said it was a nonissue with everyone else in the unit as well because the bottom line was that “he was an effective soldier.”
February 16th, 2010
Those who are desperately looking for an excuse to continue supporting Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the anti-gay military policy, are trying to downplay the efforts of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense as being an anomaly. They remind the public that the call for the repeal of a ban on open gay service men and women is their “individual opinion” and act as though it is non-representative.
But Admiral Mullen is not the only person to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Robert Gates is not our first Secretary of Defense. Nor are they the first to weigh in on this issue.
Not all such military leaders have public statements. And some have positions that can only be deduced from indirect statements. But here is what I’ve found:
Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Secretaries of Defense
It would appear that Mullen and Gates are closer to the rule than to the exception.
February 15th, 2010
The Reserve Officers Association of the United States (ROA) was founded in 1922 and granted a Congressional Charter in 1950 to “support and promote the development and execution of a military policy for the United States that will provide adequate National Security.” They are an advocacy group representing military officers.
Shortly after the 1993 battle over open service in the military, ROA passed the following resolution:
Resolution No. 07-26
Federal Law Regarding Homosexuals in the Armed ForcesWHEREAS, Title 10, United States Code, Section 654, establishes a policy whereby homosexuals are currently permitted to serve in the Armed Forces under the misguided concept of “Don’t ask; Don’t tell; Don’t pursue”;
WHEREAS, the law further states that, “Pursuant to the powers conferred by Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, it lies within the discretion of Congress to establish qualifications of service in the armed forces.” and further that, “There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces”; and
WHEREAS, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, an Act of Congress, prohibits sodomy and other deviant behavior on the part of Armed Forces personnel, on duty, off duty, public or private, in uniform, and out of uniform, worldwide; and
WHEREAS, the special conditions and demands related to accomplishing military missions, especially in wartime, are uniquely distinct from the conditions which prevail in civilian society; and
WHEREAS, heterosexual Armed Forces personnel experience significant stress when forced to associate with known homosexuals in close quarters, lacking privacy, and during life and death situations; and
WHEREAS, the presence of homosexual personnel in the Armed Forces has been found to be detrimental to good order, morale, discipline, esprit de corps, recruiting, and retention, which are at the core of combat effectiveness; and
WHEREAS, service in the Armed Forces is a unique calling, entered into by those who meet and maintain stringent physical and mental requirements; and
WHEREAS, discrimination related to deviant behavior, sexual preference, and aberrant lifestyle must not be confused or equated with that based on gender, race, or religion; and
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Reserve Officers Association of the United States, chartered by Congress, urge the Congress to exclude homosexuals from induction, enlistment, commissioning, and continued service in the Armed Forces of the United States.
In other words, this group not only opposed service by gay personnel willing to serve in silence, they endorsed bold and blatant anti-gay discrimination in terms selected to indicate contempt and disdain. This position was renewed during National Conventions on June 12, 2004 and June 30, 2007.
However, as of last Wednesday, the ROA no longer sees same-sex attracted people as deviant homosexuals with aberrant lifestyles that cause stress and are detrimental to good order. Now they are gays and lesbians serving in the U.S. military, and this endorsement of discrimination has been jettisoned.
From the ROA press release.
Members of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States voted Wednesday to rescind its previous call for complete exclusion of gays and lesbians serving in the U.S. military.
The association also rejected by a two-thirds vote a proposal to endorse the current Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) law, which allows gays and lesbians to serve, provided they keep silent about their sexual orientation.
Leaders were careful to note that they have not endorsed President Obama’s efforts to repeal the ban. They simply will take no position and cannot be used as a source by opponents of open gay service.
This decision is monumental. These include the “officers in the field” to whom Republicans claim to be deferring on this issue. This 63,000 member organization speaks not for the Pentagon, but for “all federally commissioned officers and warrant officers, and their spouses” with a special emphasis on the men and women in the Reserve Components, many of whom are now serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
February 9th, 2010
On Fox and Friends Weekend, Col. David Hunt, a Fox military analyst, called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell an “abject failure”. Fox host Clayton Morris agreed, calling it a civil rights issue and absolutely absurd.
They said Sen. John McCain is “flat wrong.”
February 7th, 2010
The Military Times is a newspaper targeted at career military personnel. For the past several years the paper has been surveying its readership on the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Tomorrow they will be releasing the latest results and today they pre-reported the findings.
Opposition to gays serving openly in the military has declined sharply among those wearing the uniform today, the Military Times newspapers will report Monday.
An exclusive survey of some 3,000 active-duty troops shows such opposition has fallen sharply from nearly two-thirds (65 percent) in 2004 to about half (51 percent) today. The survey results appear Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times.
Those opposed to open service will likely latch onto this survey, ignore the trend, and claim that this is conclusive proof that half of America’s servicemen do not want to work with gay soldiers. But, as we noted in 2008, this survey is not even close to being representative of military personnel. In fact, only 47% of the survey participants are currently members of the military.
This latest survey, however is closer to reflecting servicepersons as a whole. The respondants in this year’s poll were on average 4 years younger than those in 2008. And the drop in support for the DADT policy between 2008 and 2010 nearly mirrors that in the drop in percentage of participants over the age of 40, about 10%.
The new survey is also more extensive than prior years. It asks a number of additional questions relating to gay service personnel. After deleting the veterans, lawmakers, family members and others, the following can be gleaned from this non-representative study:
14% strongly favor
15% favor
19% neutral
15% oppose
36% strongly oppose
There were also a number of subsets of if-then questions which sought to get opinions about levels of comfort or discomfort. I did not attempt to make meaning of them.
Based on this non-representative survey, it would appear that about half of career military service personnel are opposed to open service, about one third strongly opposed. However, very few are actually willing to end a fellow soldier’s career when the subject becomes personal rather than theoretical.
February 6th, 2010
Here’s another one who thinks that gay people are pedophiles:
Stunning assault on the all-volunteer military, the very best in the world. Barack Obama now intents to treat them like lab rats in a radical social experiment, and it can be very, very detrimental. Not only does he want the Congress to repeal the law, Secretary Gates as much as said I, Secretary Gates, am going to selectively enforce the law and basically impose a moratorium on discharges for those who meet the standard as it were.
Now, here’s what’s next. NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) members, same-sex marriages. Are chaplains in the U.S. military going to be required to perform those kinds of rituals? Do they get government housing? In other words, all of this stuff that everybody says “Aw, we can just take care of it because we’ve got the best military in the world” — and we do — ads to the burden of these youngsters who are now on their ninth year of a war, back to back deployments, and more combat time than my Dad got in World War II. That is a very serious issue, and it affects readiness, recruiting and retention and they’re ignoring it in this White House.
While North slams gays for being pedophiles — a charge that has nothing to do with reality — he also slams the maturity of the men and women fighting those two wars. They aren’t youngsters. They are professional soldiers fighting for the rights of convicted accused felons like North to lie on national television.
February 5th, 2010
Arizona’s anti-gay State Senator Jack Harper felt it necessary to go to the floor of the statehouse on an issue over which that body has no say: the open service of gay military personnel. He had to warn everyone of just what would happen if, gasp, gay people were allowed to tell the truth.
They’ll smoke pot, go AWOL and infect their roommates with HIV. Because gay people are individualists and can’t “come together for the good of the unit” (a rather unfortunate choice of words).
The text of Senator Harper’s monologue.
I\’d like to tell a story about one of my experiences in the Military and how it um, how it related to the President\’s speech last night. I understand the President will be making a um, a push to allow gays to openly serve in the military. And, uh, from my experience this is, uh, this is a mistake.
Back in 1989 when I was in the first infantry division, I got there in 1988, and we were in old barracks and we were moving into new barracks and went from bays to two-man rooms. And, um, sergeant first class of my platoon wanted me to room with a person that we all knew was a homosexual.
And I said, “Sergeant, if I have to room with him I\’m going to turn him in.” So he ended up assigning another soldier to serve, um to room with this person.
Specialist Rollins was the individual. Specialist Rollins was quite an individualist. I think that might have been the biggest problem cuz when you\’re in the military you\’re about, you\’re supposed to be about putting your personality aside and coming together as a unit for the good of the unit, for the good of the country. And being an individualist there is not room for in the Military.
Specialist Rollins at the time, one time tested positive for THC which means he was smoking pot. He got an Article 15, lost a stripe, and had to do seven days of extra duty. Another time PFC Rolling went AWOL for a number of days. Our platoon had to go down and inventory his stuff including his personal effects which were very evident that he was openly homosexual.
After PFC Rollins was eventually captured he was court-martialed out, not because he was homosexual but because he had gone AWOL.
Um, being an individualist does not match well with being in the Military. You\’re supposed to conform to the standards and come together as a unit for the good of the unit and for the good of the country.
Now, after Rollins had been court-martialed out of the military, his roommate had PCS, Permanent Change of Station, gone on to another thing. About a month later, cuz I was the uh, the battalion sid burse clerk which means I ran the computer that kept the database of the grade changes, positions, things like that, rank. Uh, the uh, medics came to me and said we have a person that tested positive for, uh, for HIV and we only have the last four of his social security number and we need to look him up. It was the person who had roomed with PFC Rollins. Now this was a promiscuous soldier so it might not have been that he had a relationship with Rollins.
But, ah, we had problems from the beginning because we decided that we would not turn in someone who was openly serving in the military that was a homosexual, that we knew to be a homosexual. We tried to be tolerant, but it didn\’t work. It didn\’t work for our platoon, it didn\’t work for the first infantry division, and it will not work for the United States of America.
Thank you
I can’t even begin to discuss how inappropriate it is for a state senator to go to the floor of the senate and discuss the military career and life of another person. By name.
This is beyond foul, and he should be censured.
February 4th, 2010
Senator Hatch (Mormon – UT), is now uncomfortable with having told Andrea Mitchell that he had an open mind on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Perhaps his church informed him that his position was in opposition to changing the policy or perhaps the Republican Party clarified for him exactly what he thinks, but whatever the reason, Senator Hatch wishes the public to know that his vote will be in opposition to the change irrespective of the requests of the Pentagon, the position of the Commander in Chief, the findings of the study, or the wishes of the populace.
His church’s paper, the Deseret News, helped set the record straight.
“It’s deeply regrettable that liberal groups are misconstruing my position on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ for activist purposes. I certainly do not support repealing this policy,” Hatch’s statement on Thursday said.
I guess little ol’ “liberal” me must have misconstrued his position when I posted the video and typed out this words verbatim. I suppose I should have realized that he meant exactly the opposite of what he said. Sen. Orrin Hatch is not “at least open to the idea” of being “willing to vote for the change.”
Or, to put it in politician-speak:
“What I said was that I want to see Adm. Mullen’s report. This is a controversial issue with inflamed passions on both sides,” Hatch said.
“Over the years, the views of the military officers and experts, whom I respect, have said that repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ would make life for our troops more difficult — especially as our armed forces wage a global war on terrorism,” Hatch said.
He added, “I always try to be fair and stand by what’s right and that is why I look forward to reviewing the admiral’s report.”
Somehow “I look forward to reviewing” seems a bit disingenuous when coupled with “I do not support” and “experts, whom I trust”. One gets the sense that the ‘review’ will be a search for items to criticize rather than an impassioned desire to do what is right and correct.
I’m uncertain whether this is an indication that the Republican Party wishes to present a unified front in opposition to the change. But if that is the case, it will only serve to further entrench the party as recalcitrant, obstructionist, and hopelessly in servitude to a tiny fraction of socially ultra-conservative activists.
Polls have shown that a majority of the public, a majority of Republicans and a majority of conservatives all favor doing away with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But it seems that Sen. Orrin Hatch no longer dances to the tune of conservative Republicans; he now only dances when the subset of social extremists play.
Sadly for Senator Hatch, it must be increasingly difficult to look in the mirror and say, “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind” or “I just want to do what is right”.
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When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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