Have the Republicans Lost the Military?

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post in which one of his readers posits that the DADT hearings earlier this week may have marked a watershed where the GOP lost the gay card with the top military leadership and will hereafter find itself fighting a rearguard action trying to stop the inevitable. A portion of the post looks at the obnoxious questioning of Jeff Sessions of Alabama - a state that seems far more backward and reactionary than when I lived there going on 30 years ago - and the response of both Admiral Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates. The struggle to repeal DADT is far from over, but for the first time the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seems to recognize where the military must go, willingly or not, while Sessions continues to parrot the same old anti-gay rant that is wearing thin in more and more parts of the USA. I have written before about the "creative class" and where they congregate to live and work- as well as Richard Florida's "gay index" - and it is no surprise that Alabama continues to rank at the near the bottom of the heap in state rankings. Bigotry and intolerance carry a price. Here are some highlights from Andrew's blog as well as a video of a portion of the hearings earlier this week:
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Did you notice Admiral Mullen's smackdown of Jeff Sessions, scion of the Old South, which has owned the military for a century? Sessions accused Mullen of "undue command influence", a serious charge--just one step away from "illegal command influence". (At 4:00 in the Youtibe above).
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The accusation was so ugly, and so serious, that Gates (rightly) leapt to Mullen's defense, and smacked Sessions hard (5:20), after which Mullen looked straight at Sessions and said:

"Senator Sessions, for me, this is not about 'command influence', this is about leadership, and I take that very seriously."
(5:50)
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Sessions, in other words, told Mullen that the Republican line of attack would be to question his competence and integrity, as well as the legality of his open support for the repeal of DADT; Mullen in turn told Sessions that if the Republicans insisted on war, he was happy to oblige them. Not only is that an extraordinary personal moment, and an extraordinary moment in the struggle for gay rights, it is an extraordinary moment in American history: we just watched the tide turn. Yes, there is much work left to do, and pain and loss still to come, but the tide has turned on gay rights
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While Sullivan beleives that his readers excitement is perhaps premature, things did change earlier this week and based on the military brass that I know, I do not see Mullen prostituting himself to Sessions in the future. Indeed, Sessions may have unwittingly increased Mullen's resolve to undo DADT. Time will tell. Here's the video.