DADT's Continuing Damage to Troop Safety

While anti-gay lunatics like Elaine Donnelly whine and carry on that allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military will harm military readiness and damage troop safety and morale. Thus, they claim DADT protects our troops. The sad truth, of course, is that DADT does just the opposite of what the wingnuts allege and that repeatedly DADT has meant the loss of much needed specialists, especially Arabic speaking linguists. Servicemembers United has a new ad that brings this point home through an interview with an active duty Marine discussing the dire need for Arabic linguists and the losses he has experienced because his unit was in need of one. The video from the ad cane be found here. Additional ads can be found here.

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DADT is - no matter how one tries to dress it up - nothing more than religious based discrimination written into the federal law. The federal DOMA is more of the same - in my opinion - unconstitutional infusion of religious belief into the nation's laws.

New York Times Calls for End to DADT

In a recent main page editorial the New York Times called for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell ("DADT") which is a continuing blight on the lives of LGBT members of the military. Knowing many gays in the military who are serving honorably and often with high distinction, DADT does nothing to serve unite cohesion and everything to gratify the anti-gay hysteria of the Christianists and loons like Elaine Donnelly (who like Robert Knight is a wee bit too hysterical on the issue of gays in general). With opinion polls showing major public support for the repeal of DADT it is disgusting that the Obama administration lacks the guts to tackle the issue head on. Here are highlights from the Times editorial:

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Unfortunately, neither President Obama nor Congress shows much appetite for moving to end a ban that is not only unfair to gay men and lesbians but damaging to the military as well.
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The ostensible rationale was that the known presence of gay men and lesbians would undermine morale and unit cohesion, but as it turned out, the policy caused its own kind of damage to military readiness. Thousands of service members have been discharged from duty at a time when the military is stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The loss of highly skilled interpreters and intelligence analysts has been especially damaging.

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Members of the military and of the general public are much more receptive to the notion of accepting gays than they were in 1993.

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Advocates for gay soldiers believe that the administration, on its own, has the authority to prevent the discharge of gay people, perhaps by issuing “stop-loss” orders such as those used to keep troops serving past their original commitments in Iraq — many unwillingly. How much better to use the power to prevent the loss of gay service members eager to keep serving.

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President Obama should see if there is indeed any action he could take on his own while awaiting the military’s assessment. In the end, it will be up to Congress to root out “don’t ask, don’t tell” by overturning the law that brought it about.

Steven Colbert Mocks DADT

It is rather sad that other than Rachel Madow and a few others the only "news anchors" if you will who have the balls to take on the issue of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and other LGBT issues in order to show the idiocy of the anti-gay loons are on the Comedy Channel. Namely, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Colbert is currently in Iraq entertaining troops and did a skit which, while leaving room for a more forceful denunciation of DADT, mocked the idiocy of the policy. Here is a clip:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Formidable Opponent - Don't Ask, Don't Tell
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

What is distressing is that now with even a majority of conservatives supporting a repeal of DADT, the Obama administration continues to lack the fortitude and integrity to push for repeal or at least a stop loss directive that could halt expulsions of LGBT service members. While the debate around DADT is a philosophical debate for many, living here in the presence of a huge number of military personnel, this horrible policy impacts on the lives of real living, breathing individuals literally on an everyday basis.

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I urge readers to please contact their representatives in Congress and the White House to demand that DADT be repealed.

Anti-Gay Bigotry of Don't Ask, Don't Tell Has High Price

On July 23, 2008, militant gay-haters like the delusional Elaine Donnelly testified as to why gays should be drummed out of the military before the House Armed Services Committee. Meanwhile, it has come out via the Christian Science Monitor that the military is paying $150,000 in retention bonuses to keep linguists who are fluent in Arabic from retiring from the military. Based on that figure, the military has spent perhaps in the neighborhood of $9,000,000 to retain linguists replacing the gay Arabic linguists forced out of the military due to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Thus, homophobia on the part of those like Ms. Donnelly is costing the taxpayers plenty. I hope Ms. Donnelly's orgasmic thrill over denigrating gays and seeking to keep gays less than full citizens is worth the price. Personally, I don't think it comes anywhere near close and believe Congress should tell Ms. Donnelly to go get herself a new sex toy. Maybe Ms. Donnelly's bogus organization can make a financial donation to reimburse the rest of us taxpayers for the money being needlessly thrown away. Here are some highlights from the story:

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Washington - The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks. . . . After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists.

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The military's conventional language training program, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., could not churn out enough American soldiers proficient in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Pashtu, and Farsi, and the military quickly turned to private contractors to fill the gap. Numerous programs have sprouted up, including one at Fort Lewis, Wash., where soldiers are given a 10-month immersion program in language and culture.

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Army personnel officials want to put the 09 Lima retention program on par with Army Special Forces, which would mean paying those linguists as much as $150,000 each to stay in the service.

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Interesting that Arabic speaking linguists are deemed critical, yet one's sexual orientation trumps all else. Here are some highlights from Steve Rall's column at Huffington Post that takes a further look at the stupidity of DADT:

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The Army is taking almost every step imaginable -- from six-figure bonuses to civilian interpreters in the warzone to recruitment campaigns targeting Arab-American communities -- to beef up its language capability. Every step, that is, except one. Army officials have yet to tell Congress to dump the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that has resulted in the dismissal of more than 5 dozen Arabic speakers who were otherwise qualified and ready to serve.

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During hearings on the State Department's 2008 budget request, [Congressman Gary] Ackerman noted that Secretary Rice repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting qualified language experts to work in the agency. Remembering that the armed forces have fired more than 300 language experts (including those 5 dozen fluent in Arabic), Ackerman wondered, "Can we marry up those two -- or maybe that's the wrong word -- can we have some kind of union of those two issues?"

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"Well, it seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages -- Farsi and Arabic, etc.," Ackerman said. "For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists, but they're very brave with the terrorists. ... If the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they'd get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad."

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"This absurdity can't continue," Ackerman later wrote in an August '07 Newsday op-ed. "The 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is not only wasteful and inefficient, it's unfair and un-American. In the middle of a war we are throwing out good people who have volunteered to put their lives on the line for their country."