Box Turtle Bulletin

Barney Frank on Rick Warren, Obama, and the “Gay Agenda”

Jeffrey Toobin has a great profile of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) in the latest New Yorker. First thing that pops out is that Frank intends to be much more aggressive than Obama:

Frank’s mordant view of human nature presents a contrast to the sunnier approach of President-elect Obama, a difference reflected in their dispute over Obama’s choice to have Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, give the invocation at the Inauguration. “Obama tends to overstate his ability to get people to change their opinions and underestimates the importance of confronting ideological differences,” Frank told me. “It’s one thing to talk to somebody. I talk to more conservatives than anyone, because I’m trying to get legislation passed. But it’s another to make Rick Warren the most honored clergyman in the world.” In California, Warren supported Proposition 8, the successful anti-gay-marriage referendum. “Now, when we fight Warren in California, we are going to hear, ‘Oh, yeah, but Obama picked him for the inaugural.’ He doesn’t deserve that honor. And I don’t want to hear that the other clergyman at the inaugural, Reverend [Joseph] Lowery, supports gay rights. I didn’t vote for a tie in the election.”

Frank worries that Obama’s evenhandedness may prove to be a political liability.

I think we all can relate to that worry. Frank, on the other hand, won’t let that get in the way of what he thinks needs to be done for the economy (he’s chairman of the powerful Committee on Financial Services) and for LGBT rights:

Frank is uncharacteristically hopeful about the future, including gay rights. “We’re going to do three things in Congress,” he told me. “First, a hate-crimes bill—that shouldn’t be too hard. Next, employment discrimination. We almost got that through before, but now we can win even if we add transgender protections, which we are going to do. And finally, after the troops get home from Iraq, gays in the military. The time has come.” [Emphasis mine]

That last point is key. If we’re going to wait until after the troops get home from Iraq, then repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” probably won’t happen for a very long time. But his response to those who claim that this represents some sort of radical agenda was pretty good:

“I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.”

Merry Christmas! Dems Duck DADT

How’s this for a Christmas present? The Roll Call is reporting that Congressional Democrats have decided to delay taking up the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for at least two years — that would be after the mid-term elections:

Key Democrats — even openly gay lawmakers — are quietly conceding to letting another two years go by before trying to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the controversial 1993 law banning openly gay people from serving in the military. Most fear that moving too quickly on such a divisive issue could backfire, and most would rather tread lightly, at least in the early months of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) both have said the time is right to revisit the policy that Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helped implement. But Pelosi, for one, refused to say whether she planned to bring legislation to the floor next year to overturn the law…

Democratic lawmakers regularly beg off questions about the contentious policy, arguing that other issues are far more important — such as winding down the war in Iraq or bolstering the economy. They also remember the political uproar when then-President Bill Clinton used the beginning of his presidency to try to overturn an outright ban on gays serving in the military. That effort tied his administration in knots in his first months in office, and Democrats fear a repeat performance.”

The country has chanced a lot in the past fifteen years since DADT was put into effect. But the Dems haven’t. They’re just as cowardly as they always were, this time spooked by a fifteen-year-old ghost.

The Democratic party holds a commanding presence in the House, and a very strong one in the Senate. If they wait two years, we’re looking at after the mid-term elections — when the ruling party typically loses seats.  After that, we’ll hear the predictable counsel that DADT will not be doable with the more conservative Congress. This is the strongest position the Democratic party is likely to be in for some time.  As one famous politician who had no fear of shaking things up often asked, if not now, when?

And where is the HRC on this? Oh, I see. They’re fully on board with the timid wait-and-see approach. Are they representing our interests here? Or the Democratic Party’s?

It’s time we had leadership that’s not afraid of its own shadow. Our opponents certainly haven’t made their gains by moving with such timidity.

[via Queerty]

DADT Foregone to be Long Gone

The New York Times has a profile on Admiral Mike Mullen, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen’s term will not expire until a year into Obama’s administration and the Times thinks the transition will be smooth.

They also reveal that Mullen is pragmatic about the end of Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell and gives a hint that the Washington establishment assumes that President-Elect Obama will keep his commitments to the gay community:

In preparation for his new commander in chief, Admiral Mullen … has also had initial conversations with his top commanders about potential changes in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that allows gay men and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation secret.

Mr. Obama has taken a strong stand against the law as a moral issue, although his team has signaled that he will not push for its repeal in the early months of his administration to avoid the kind of blowup that engulfed President Bill Clinton when he sought to lift an outright ban on gay men and lesbians in the military in his first days in office. (In a cautionary tale for Admiral Mullen, that 1993 storm raged in part because Gen. Colin L. Powell, who was the holdover chairman of the Joint Chiefs from the first Bush administration, publicly disagreed with what became a Clinton compromise solution of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”)

Fifteen years later, Mr. Obama is of the view that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is long out of date and that it is time for gay men and lesbians to serve openly.

“The president-elect’s been pretty clear that he wants to address this issue,” Admiral Mullen said in the interview. “And so I am certainly mindful that at some point in time it could come.”

A friend of Admiral Mullen said the admiral had begun to think about practical implications like housing, but Admiral Mullen said there had been no formal planning or task forces on the issue.

Let’s hope this means that the military will not only go along with Obama’s efforts but will be supportive of ending this bastion of institutionalized discrimination.

Colin Powell Thinks DADT Should Be “Reevaluated”; Ken Blackwell Thinks He Knows Better

Former secretary of State and retired general Colin Powell has again voiced support for reevaluating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Powell told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria for Sunday’s GPS program that “We should be reevaluating it.” A clip from that interview was played on Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room today:

Powell said:

We definitely should reevaluate it. It’s been 15 years since we put in DADT which was a policy that became a law. I didn’t want it to become a law but it became a law. Congress felt that strongly about it. But it’s been 15 years and attitudes have changed and so I think it is time for the Congress, since it is their law, to have a full review of it, and I’m quite sure that’s what President-elect Obama will want to do.

That clip was immediately followed by an interview between Wolf Blitzer and Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State who is running for chairman of the Republican Party. Blackwell is also a senior fellow the Family “Research” Council, a credential that Blitzer failed to mention.  Blitzer asked Blackwell whether he agreed with Powell that DADT ought to be reevaluated:

KB: No I don’t. I don’t have General Powell’s experience in the military, but I think that the present policy is working and should be held in place.

WB: Because a lot of gays don’t think it’s working. They think a lot of talented young men and women who happen to be gay, they’re getting kicked out even after the U.S. taxpayer spends hundreds of thousands of dollars training them for sophisticated missions.

KB: Well I think the legislative process works. I think this issue has been vetted, discussed, debated and decided upon, and it works.

Gen. Powell last addressed DADT in July during an inteview with the late Tim Russert. At that time, Powell demurred when asked about DADT, saying, “the country certainly has changed” since 1993, when DADT was enacted. “I don’t know that it has changed so much that this would be the right thing to do now,” he added.

GLAAD Harris Interactive Survey: More Public Support

GLAAD has released a new survey by Harris Interactive that shows increased support for a number of the gay community’s goals:

• 49% of adults favor marriage equality; 49% oppose when presented with an up or down decision.
• When given options, 38% favor marriage; 38% favor civil unions while disallowing marriage; and 22% wish for no legal recognition at all.
• 69% oppose adoption discrimination.
• 64% favor overturning DADT.
• 63% favor trans-inclusive Hate Crimes Legislation
• 51% support trans-inclusive ENDA, 45% do not. They didn’t inquire about non-discrimination laws that did not include transgender persons.
• 47% support immigration rights; 48% do not. This one surprises me and may be a result of the phrasing of the question: Do you favor or oppose… allowing gay Americans to sponsor their non-American life partners to become residents of the United States.

One thing that I found fascinating is that issues of homosexuality are sharply dividing Mainline Christians from Evangelical Christians. In all questions, Mainline Christians were gay-favorable and Evangelicals were among the least favorable.

This was particularly evident on issues that were in traditional areas of Christian activism (pre-Religious Right). For example, on the ENDA question, Mainline was the most supportive of all demographics while Evangelical was the least.

As the issues surrounding sexual orientation become more instilled in the war over religious dominance in the culture, a possible positive side effect could be that the non-religious come to see this as a sectarian battle and opt out of anti-gay efforts.

Palm Center Warns of Bias in Obama Military Advisor

In an article in the New Republic, Nathanial Frank explains why overturning Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell, the military’s ban on open service of gay persons in the military, should not be a difficult problem.

Today, it’s a far different world. Conservative and military resistance to openly gay service is swiftly falling. Last week, over a hundred retired generals and admirals released a statement calling for an end to the gay ban. Earlier this year, a report by a team of bipartisan retired flag officers (released by the Palm Center, where I work) became the most extensive study of gay service since 1993. Its conclusion: Congress should repeal the gay ban. Last year, General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out against the ban. He was quickly followed by former GOP lawmakers and pro-ban supporters Alan Simpson and Bob Barr. Even Sam Nunn, who led the opposition to gay service, has changed his tune. This year he called for a review of the policy, saying that “times change,” and it is now “appropriate to take another look.”

Polls corroborate the sea change in opinion. Roughly four fifths of Americans oppose “don’t ask, don’t tell,” including a majority of Republicans, conservatives, and church-goers. Polls show that about half of junior enlisted personnel now support lifting the ban, and that three quarters of enlisted personnel are “personally comfortable” with gays and lesbians. Only five percent are “very uncomfortable.” This all demonstrates a major gulf between the assumptions of the old guard (that homosexuality is incompatible with military service) and the reality on the ground (that whatever homophobia still exists does not break unit cohesion).

But Frank warns that Retired General Merrill McPeak, President-Elect Obama’s chief military advisor, has a history – as recent as last month – of expressing anti-gay bigotry and opposition to equality.

In his recent comments, McPeak openly admitted that his position is based on his own personal intolerance and that of other senior military leaders. “I couldn’t see how I could become an advocate for open homosexuality in Air Force combat units,” McPeak said last month. In order to lift the ban on open gays, “the service leadership will have to go to the gay and lesbian annual ball and lead the first dance,” something he and other brass have no intention of doing.

While McPeak’s anti-gay attitudes are disturbing, they are perhaps not surprising. The Palm Center (Frank’s employer) reveals that McPeak also has a history of misogyny.

In 1991 and 1992, McPeak opposed women in combat, saying in talks with lawmakers that he had “personal prejudices” against expanding combat roles for women, “even though logic tells us” that women can conduct combat operations just as well as men. He told Congress then that he would choose an inferior male flight instructor over a superior female one even if it made for a “militarily less effective situation.” “I admit it doesn’t make much sense,” he said, “but that’s the way I feel about it.” Elsewhere he repeated that his position did not meet “strict evidence standards for logic,” but that that did not raise doubts in him about his position.

No doubt Obama feels loyalty to this military leader who supported his campaign. But let’s hope that he gives no heed to the advice of a man whose judgment is admittedly swayed by his own personal bigotries.

Obama’s LGBT Civil Rights Agenda

The website for President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has posted a fairly comprehensive list of policy objectives for the LGBT community, including fully inclusive employment non-discrimination protections, hate crime protections, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” expanded adoption rights and “full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples.”

So while I’m happy to see the president-elect sign on to a very comprehensive LGBT civil rights agenda, I would be very surprised to see White House leadership on these issues. I expect that Obama will have his hands full with the economy and pressing issues in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. Besides, the ball will always be Congress’s court anyway. After all, that’s where all legislation originates, and it will be up to congressional leaders to draft the legislation and place them on the calendar for a vote.

Nevertheless, it is a great thing to see. And who knew that a gay agenda would come from a straight man?

Click here to read Obama’s civil rights plan for the LGBT community

More Retired Generals and Admirals Oppose DADT

AP:

More than 100 retired generals and admirals called Monday for repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays so they can serve openly, according to a statement obtained by The Associated Press.

“As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality,” the officers wrote.

I don’t know how many retired generals there are, but Wikipedia indicates that the number of generals at any given time is restricted so this may well amount to a sizeable percentage. In any case, it is a significant increase in support from prior years.

The list of 104 former officers who signed the statement appears to signal growing support for resolving the status of gays in the military. Last year, 28 former generals and admirals signed a similar statement.

President-elect Obama has promised to lift the ban. However, this is unlikely to occur early in his administration. In latest news reports he indicated that this is not a high priority item for and that he will only act after there is concensus within military leadership.

The Homosexual Agenda: What’s Next?

So we have a new Congress and a new President, with both branches of government held by Democrats. For some of us, this is a dream come true. After eight years of a hostile administration and more than a decade of a hostile Congress, it would appear that this is our best chance to advance several issues which are important to the LGBT community.

Of course, this setup has disappointed us before. A similar arrangement in 1993 brought us Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

But things just might be different this time. During this presidential campaign, President-elect Barack Obama included four specific LGBT issues among his campaign promises:

• Full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
• Passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act
• Passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
• Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the ban on gays serving in the military.

So, what’s really on tap for 2009?

We’ve been focused so much on marriage amendments the past several months that the DOMA is probably topmost in our minds right now. Timothy offered some possibilities and alternatives for repealing all or parts of the DOMA. As he pointed out, all of those options are problematic.

I personally don’t see DOMA going away anytime soon. Just because it’s foremost in our thoughts right at the moment doesn’t mean it will necessarily be the top of the “agenda” in January.

But we have seen considerable momentum building on the other issues. In the past two years, we saw movement on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act and the ENDA. Unfortunately, that ENDA was the non-inclusive variety, and the resulting dissention among LGBT advocates ultimately doomed ENDA’s passage.

We also saw Congressional hearings on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, although that hasn’t translated yet into legislative action. Nevertheless, the groundwork has been laid for DADT going the way of the dodo bird and polar icecaps.

The top LGBT priorities for 2009 will be driven by what is politically possible. In the current climate, I think Hate Crimes and repealing DADT are doable. ENDA is achievable as well, but only if we get our own act together and get behind a fully inclusive one. Otherwise, we’ll suffer the same division and acrimony as we did the last go-round, with the same result.

Besides those three items, there are some other opportunities as well. The new administration will almost certainly lift the HIV traveler’s ban after Congress repealed the 1993 law which mandated it. That law was one of Sen. Jesse Helms’s great legacies. The Bush administration signed the repeal, but it has so far failed to follow up by actually rescinding the ban. That unfinished business will be left for the next administration

We might also realize other important gains as well, like support for honest reality-based HIV prevention programs that rely on something more realistic than abstinence until marriage — especially when marriage continues to be pushed out of reach for so many gays and lesbians.

And that brings us back to DOMA. And unfortunately, DOMA is probably off the table. With the passage of three new marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and California, there will be few legislators on Capital Hill willing to put much effort into something their own constituents voted against back home. In a stretch, we might be able to add some domestic partnership benefits for federal employees, but I’m afraid DOMA itself will probably be around for quite some time to come.

McCain: “I Hope Gay and Lesbian Americans Will Give Full Consideration to Supporting Me”

In what is believed to be the first time a Republican presidential nominee made himself available to the gay press, John McCain participated in a written interview with the Washington Blade this week in which he said he appreciated the Log Cabin Republicans’ endorsement and hopes that “gay and lesbian Americans will give full consideration to supporting me.”

McCain wrote about working with former Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) for 25 years. Kolbe was the first Republican Congressman to serve in the House as an openly gay man. McCain also spoke highly of former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano, who is now the executive director of GLAAD. Giuliano survived a recall election in 2001 over his sexual orientation. And McCain recalled giving the eulogy at Mark Bingham’s funeral. Bingham, a member of a San Francisco bay-area gay rugby team, died while bringing United Flight 93 down into a Pennsylvania cornfield on September 11, 2001. His actions along with others on the flight may have saved thousands of lives in Washington, D.C., which is believed to have been the hijackers’ target.

As for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” McCain said:

I promise to give full consideration to any legislation that reaches my desk. On “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I’m going to defer to our military commanders. So far they have told me it’s working. I’m willing to have the policy reviewed to make sure that’s the case, but at the end of the day, I’m going to rely on the commanders who will be impacted by a change in the law.

I wonder if this somewhat non-committal answer will be satisfactory to his conservative base. For some, merely promising to have the policy reviewed might be too much for them. For example, Tom Minnery, head of Focus On the Family Action sent out an email alert identifying “Out in the barracks: homosexuality hits the armed forces” as an alarming headline we might see if Obama were elected.

Major Alan Rogers – the Rest of the Story

In March we learned of the death of Army Maj. Alan G. Rogers, a man praised by the Pentagon and lauded in the Washington Post and on MSNBC. And we observed the mainstream media try to hide the truth of Maj. Rogers’ life, that he was a gay man actively working to reverse the ban on openly gay servicepersons. Then we read as the Post’s ombudsman chided the paper for the deletion (unknowing that she was leaving out facts of her own).

We even saw how some friends and distant family angrily tried to hide or deny his orientation and how someone at the Pentagon attempted to change information in Rogers’ Wikipedia entry.

Now the New Yorker has an 8 page article detailing Rogers’ life and laying rest to any rumors or misunderstandings. It is well worth reading.

Deputy Secretary England attended a memorial service at the Pentagon, where Thomas Gandy, a director of counterintelligence and human intelligence, hailed Rogers as “simply the most talented officer I ever had the opportunity to serve with,” and described his selflessness in taking wounded veterans at Walter Reed hospital to a Super Bowl party on a nearby base. “There was something special about Alan Rogers,” Lieutenant General John F. Kimmons, the deputy chief of staff for Army Intelligence, said. “He was more than he seemed.”

And indeed he was.

And there was much more behind the story of efforts to hide his orientation. The New Yorker did not find malice or a conspiracy, but the type of well-intentioned homophobia that assumes that a hiding one’s orientation protects a reputation.

Rogers was both more secretive and more honest than many of those who knew him really wanted to believe about him. He was a brave man, a good man, a loving man, and the embodiment of the evidence that those who seek to keep this discriminatory ban operate from a base of foolishness, ignorance and bigotry.

FRC Disapointed With Donnelly’s Testimony?

You bet they are. Yesterday, right on schedule, the Family “Research” Council sent out their daily Washington Update yesterday as they always do. Washington Updates typically consist of three stories, and yesterday’s top story was one which blamed Elaine Donnelly’s utterly deplorable testimony before the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee on “rude congressmen” instead of  Donnelly’s own abysmal incompetence:

Rude Congressmen Tell and Don’t Ask at Hearing

For the first time since Congress beat back Bill Clinton’s effort to bring homosexuals into the military in 1993, there was a hearing on the topic yesterday on Capitol Hill, which FRC’s Vice President for Policy Peter Sprigg and several Witherspoon Fellows attended. The Democrats in Congress are laying the groundwork for action next year, when they hope Barack Obama will be president, to overturn the law which codified the military’s longstanding policy excluding homosexuals. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, and Sgt. Major Brian Jones, a veteran of the Army’s elite Delta Force, ably defended the law in the face of shockingly disrespectful and even abusive questioning by members of the House Military Personnel subcommittee. Particularly egregious was the behavior of Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), who said that Donnelly’s concern about the impact of HIV-positive soldiers was “dumb” and that her testimony about behaviors common among homosexuals was “bonkers.” Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) used the silly line, “When did you decide to be heterosexual?” The false assumptions that people are “born gay” and can never change, and that homosexuality is equivalent to race, permeated the questioning. Yet no one explained how it would benefit the military to recruit service members who plan to commit acts which are criminal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

This morning, that lame defense of Donnelly is gone, along with the rest of the entire Washington Update for the day.

Press, Congressmen Skewer Donnelly’s Testimony

Elaine Donnelly’s ridiculous testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee continues to elicit expressions of disbelief throughout Washington. Speaking before the first hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 15 years, Donnelly set back the cause of excluding gays in the military and “torpedoe[d] her own ship,” according to Dana Milbank at The Washington Post:

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement “just bonkers” and “dumb,” and he called her claims about an HIV menace “inappropriate.” Said Snyder: “By this analysis . . . we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country.”

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a veteran of the war in Iraq, called Donnelly’s words “an insult to me and many of the soldiers” by saying they “aren’t professional enough to serve openly with gay troops while successfully completing their military mission.”

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) pointed a finger at [retired Navy Capt. Joan] Darrah and glared at Donnelly. “Would you please tell me, Miss Donnelly, why I should give one twit about this woman’s sexual orientation, when it didn’t interfere one bit with her service?” Donnelly said something about “forced intimacy.” Donnelly returned to the case of “Cynthia Yost . . . assaulted by a group of lesbians.” She neglected to mention that the incident was alleged to have occurred in 1974.

Donnelly clearly seemed to unify lawmakers on both sides of the aisles against her. As Milbank pointed out, “It was tempting to think that Donnelly had been chosen by Democrats to sabotage the case against open military service for homosexuals.”

Donnelly wasn’t the only opponent of DADT to provide comic relief:

Donnelly was followed by [retired Army Sgt. Maj. Brian] Jones, a tough-talking businessman who suggested that the military’s tradition of “selfless service” would be undermined by gay men and lesbians. “In the military environment, team cohesion, morale and esprit de corps is a matter of life and death,” he said. His written statement spelled it “esprit decor”; it also warned of “a band of lesbians that harassed new females,” and noted his own military experience when “the only way to keep from freezing at night was to get as close as possible for body heat — which means skin to skin.”

Military Service Issue – Sixty Years Ago This Month

Today’s debates over “forced cohabitation” are not without historical comparisons.

On 26 July 1948, President Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9981, establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It was accompanied by Executive Order 9980, which created a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment.

The comparison was not lost on one witness today (CNN)

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, a black man who joined the Army when it was segregated, testified that the current treatment of gays and lesbians is similar to how African-Americans were treated before President Truman integrated the military in 1948.

“I know what it is like to be thought of as a second-class citizen, and I know what it is like to have your hard work dismissed because of what you are or what you look like,” Coleman said.

Earlier this year the House of Representatives honored the order ending segregation

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress to honorably and respectfully recognize the historic significance and to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 signed on July 26, 1948 that declared it to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin thereby beginning the process of ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.

Today former Secretary of State Colin Powell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and others celebrated the 60th anniversary of the integration of U.S. Armed Forces in the Capitol Rotunda.

Donnelly Repeats Bogus Statistics to Congress

Today in Congressional Hearings on whether the Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell policy is effective or counter-productive, anti-gay activist Elaine Donnelly claimed that polls support her contention that military personnel don’t wish to serve with openly gay servicemen. The Army Times reports

Donnelly, head of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy group that focuses on military personnel issues and a longtime opponent of gays in the military, said the annual Military Times poll of service members consistently shows that between 57 percent and 59 percent of service members oppose allowing gays to serve openly in uniform.

But the poll that Donnelly quotes is not a representative poll of service members. We analyzed Donnelly’s claims in February, and found the following:

Using the 2000 statistics of the Heath Status of the United States Army (and assuming that there is not a strong variance between services) we can compare the Military Times poll to the Army’s report of those who actually serve.

• Army average age – 28; MT poll participant average age – 37
• 44% of service members between 17 and 24; 7% of MT poll participants fell in this category
• 8% of army personnel are 40 or older; 41% of MT poll participants are 40 or older
• 51% of army personnel are married; 82% of MT poll participants are married

As the Military Times put it, “The annual poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military.”

In other words, this is NOT a poll of active service persons who are on the front lines eating, sleeping, and showering with their mates. In fact, only 2% of those polled lived in barracks. Unlike the Zogby poll, the Military Times poll is of those who have made the military their career.

Perhaps Donnelly isn’t edequately skilled to determine for herself that the Military Times poll is non-representative. Or perhaps she deliberately uses deception as a tool to advance her anti-gay agenda.

But in either case she should not be testifying before Congress.