Wow!! DADT repeal passed the Senate with a vote of 63 yes votes. In many ways, I was afraid to truly hope that repeal would pass. It seems we've had so many set backs and so many false promises. I am still a little bit stunned. However, repeal id not a done deal as yet since as SLDN has outlined (1) Obama must still sign the bill, (2) Obama and the Joint Chiefs need to sign off on certification, and (3) there is a 60 day delay o effectiveness after Obama transmits written certification to the congressional Armed Services Committees. Nonetheless, a huge obstacle has been surmounted with the Senate Vote and the vote shows that at least six Republicans understand the concept of religious freedom under the U. S. Constitution. Here are highlights from The Advocate:*
In a historic vote Saturday morning that seemed highly improbable just weeks earlier, the U.S. Senate approved a stand-alone bill to proceed on repealing the military’s 17-year-old ban on lesbians and gays serving openly in the military.
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The vote was 63-33, paving the way for a final vote on the bill Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the same piece of legislation earlier this week and sending the bill to the president's desk will only require approval from a majority of senators.
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Six Republicans joined Democrats in voting to end the ban: Sens. Scott Brown, Susan Collins, Mark Kirk, Lisa Murkowski, Olympia Snowe, and George Voinovich. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was absent for the vote. Sen. Lieberman said from the floor that open service was not a liberal or conservative ideal, a Republican or Democratic ideal, but an American ideal. “It’s time to right a wrong and put the military in line with the best of American values,” Lieberman said.
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The White House has issued the following statement from President Obama on Saturday's Senate vote to proceed on DADT repeal: "Today, the Senate has taken an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security while violating the very ideals that our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives to defend. By ending 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,' no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay. And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love.
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Despite the jubilation on the part of many, the bigots were not quiet in defeat. This from The Advocate article:
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In a final act of protest, Sen. John McCain called it “a very sad day” and imagined that a successful vote would lead to “high fives all over the liberal bastions of America.”
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“I hope that when we pass this legislation,” McCain said, “that we will understand that we are doing great damage, and we could possibly, and probably, as the commandant of the Marine Corps said … harm the battle effectiveness which is so vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”
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And among the Christianists, the spittle, bile and hate was off the charts. Among those spewing hate and demands for a theocratic repeal of todays DADT action are Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel, along with a coalition of anti-gay Christianist hate groups (i.e., American Family Association, Family Research Council; Liberty Counsel, Liberty Alliance Action, Vision America, The Oak Initiative, The Call to Action, Concerned Women for America, High Impact Leadership Coalition, Campaign for Working Families, Conservative Action Project, Traditional Values Coalition, and others), who today signed on to a letter vowing to force the next Congress to reverse today's repeal of DADT, American Family Association hate group radio host Byran Fischer, and of course, the Klan loving Tony Perkins of FRC. Staver ranted in part as follows:
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We promise a full mobilization of faith-based and policy organizations, veterans, and military families in the states of every Senator who voted for repeal of DADT against the advice of our service chiefs and during a time of war. Those Senators - and the Pentagon leaders responsible for this breach of trust - should understand that they will be the object of concerted political action against them."
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Fischer and Perkins had the following batshitery. First Fischer:
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"The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours. They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world. "Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair
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And the ever hateful Perkins said this in part:*
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"Today is a tragic day for our armed forces. The American military exists for only one purpose - to fight and win wars. Yet it has now been hijacked and turned into a tool for imposing on the country a radical social agenda. This may advance the cause of reshaping social attitudes regarding human sexuality, but it will only do harm to the military's ability to fulfill its mission.
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I expect we will see ever more lunacy from this hate merchants and modern day Pharisees. Hopefully, the insanity will open the eyes of more Americans as to the foul nature of these false Christians.
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