Passing DADT repeal is only the beginning of a long process of bringing the Pentagon regulations and systems into conformity with the new law. This will take a while.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has put out a statement that while sobering also attests to the seriousness with which he is approaching the heavy lifting required to move the Department of Defense in abolishing the vestiges of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:
Statement by Secretary Robert Gates on Senate Vote to Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
“I welcome today’s vote by the Senate clearing the way for a legislative repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ law.
“Once this legislation is signed into law by the President, the Department of Defense will immediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and methodically, but purposefully. This effort will be led by Dr. Clifford Stanley, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and himself a retired Marine Corps major general and infantry officer.
“The legislation provides that repeal will take effect once the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that implementation of the new policies and regulations written by the Department is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces. As I have stated before, I will approach this process deliberately and will make such certification only after careful consultation with the military service chiefs and our combatant commanders and when I am satisfied that those conditions have been met for all the Services, commands and units.
“It is therefore important that our men and women in uniform understand that while today’s historic vote means that this policy will change, the implementation and certification process will take an additional period of time. In the meantime, the current law and policy will remain in effect.
“Successful implementation will depend upon strong leadership, a clear message and proactive education throughout the force. With a continued and sustained commitment to core values of leadership, professionalism and respect for all, I am convinced that the U.S. military can successfully accommodate and implement this change, as it has others in history.”
– Steve Clemons
Yes most of us active duty are against this. It seems easy
when u look at it as a civilian it seems to be a clear rights
issue. However from a logistical stand point it’s a nightmare.
Do they have gay flights in basic or just integrate them with
straight guys? It’s not fair to them to have to shower in the
same shower. It’s like putting me in a shower with girls even if
I wasn’t even attracted to any of them it’s going to be
uncomfortable. What about deployments? I’m not allowed to
have a girl in my room but there’s no questions asked one
two homosexual guys are in a room together? Just some
things to consider. I’m not homophobic or anything just
bringing up real issues. It’s not as easy as it seems.
One very sick system!
Gay victims and/or perpetrators?
CODE PINK?
—-
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/12/2010122182546344551.html
—quote—-
Rape rampant in US military
Statistics and soldiers’ testimonies reveal a harrowing epidemic of sexual assault in the US military.
…
I have been reading your posts during my afternoon break, and I must admit the whole article has been very useful and very well written. I thought I would let you know that for some reason this blog does not display well in Internet Explorer 8. I wish Microsoft would stop changing their software. I have a question for you. Do you mind exchanging blog roll links? That would be really cool!
blog???
Thanks for the blog loaded with so many information. Stopping by your blog helped me to get wha
It no longer matters, practically speaking, but 67% of Marines in
combat arms opposed repeal. The source is the Pentagon’s own
report. 11% asserted that repeal would enhance unit effectiveness.
Whether or not a respondent to the Pentagon survey did his job in
hot combat zones seems to be highly predictive of their opinion of
repeal.
McCain referenced these results in a letter to Gates, back in
October, but Gates took the position that the DoD is not setting
policy by plebiscite
“The front line troops. The guys who actually do the fighting and defend the country, appear to be opposed to this”
Care to back that up with some evidential substance, or are you just gonna post your usual horseshit?
And, uh, this is 2010, not 1942. Haven’t you heard, we don’t use our troops to “defend the country” anymore.
Besides, what are you bitchin’ about? You and your ilk are being handed a steady inventory of frag meat. It’ll keep your grenade throwing arms in shape.
I don’t see any issue in integrating transexual, transgender
personnel into combat arms roles in the Marines, Rangers and
Special Forces, and obviously Okinawa would have gone better had
we been awake to this fact 70 years ago. I therefore applaud this
outcome.
I am behind the times, however and I don’t know what the ‘Q’
stands for in @Mike’s comment. Does this make me a bad person?
O.K eleven post by Clemons on DADT. If only you could apply that same concern about gay human rights issues to Palestinian human rights issues. Or Iraqi human rights issues. Clearly you are extremely selective in your application and concern about human rights issues. A pity…really
Rights exist to be expanded, never reduced. Period
Thanks for staying on this whole thing.
Your bald middle-aged straight pal,
Pete
@ nadine:
Actually, Yes.
LINK: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/the-ivy-league-makes-peace-with-rotc/68251/
And these people would seem to be able to afford a whole lot of extra consumption! Imagine going 18 or more months not making your 20,000 a MONTH mortgage payments, and the banks just let it go on and on.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/12/are-banks-afraid-to-foreclose-on-the-rich.html#comments
(link might be to comments, scroll up if so.)
***
And the housing bubble in China has led to numerous ghost towns….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339536/Ghost-towns-China-Satellite-images-cities-lying-completely-deserted.html#ixzz18XKsh7HI
Happy holidays, off topic, to one and all, and here’s the perfect gift for that special someone on your list who has gotten a lot of legislative successes but you still want to give him/her something:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121801304.html?hpid=sec-health
HILarious!
This alone could save our economy!
Steve, now that DADT has been repealed, can we expect to see Harvard and Berkeley and other universities welcome ROTC back on campus with open arms? After all, they said they weren’t really anti-military; they only objected to the discrimination of DADT.
Just asking.
Man, reading the comments on this page is like a breath of fresh air. Found my way here while researching how the repeal of DADT would affect UCMJ article 125, and directly after venturing into Freeper territory.
I’ll own my bias; I agree with most of the comments so far. But what makes this so refreshing is the excellent spelling, punctuation, and writing of the comments. That and the lack of infantile homophobic comments.
Thank you.
Gates: “I will approach this process deliberately and will make such certification only after careful consultation with the military service chiefs and our combatant commanders and when I am satisfied that those conditions have been met for all the Services, commands and units.”
And we trust these clowns with the defense of the country? They repeatedly say “all options are on the table” when it comes to attackiung some poor country but they have no plans on how to accommodate ordinary people in the military? He will approach this process deliberately. He’s had a couple years to get ready. And what “such certification” will he make? What would he do if we were attacked, approach a response deliberately and . . .?
Can you tell that he’s worked for government, like forever?
How about if Gates’s commander-in-Chief told him to do it first thing Monday? But no. Obama is equally clueless. Saying that they had been
Gates and Mullen were crucial to this vote, as
Senator Levin mentions in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PRNovvOLX4
i certainly hope that he realizes the importance and puts into
place LGBTQ personnel to assist in the process; without input
from them, they will miss the point of ‘inclusion’; let’s hope
he has this foresight…
Bob,
Beautiful. Thanks.
The furor over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) takes me back
down memory lane, a long way, to the year 1952 in fact. The
controversy then wasn’t about gays, but about Blacks (then
called Negroes).
I was in an Arkansas National Guard artillery unit that was
activated for the Korean War. We were mostly a bunch of poor
redneck boys who never expected to go to war. We just
wanted a little extra money and a nice uniform, and the war
was a great inconvenience.
We had been raised with prejudices against black people–
this was considered normal at the time. We felt it was normal
for blacks to literally sit in back of the bus and endure
hardships that we rednecks didn’t have to suffer because we
white folks were naturally superior.
After about fourteen months in combat we were told that we
would be getting replacements–and some of them would be
NEGROES. You can imagine how that went over with us good
ol’ boys. We cussed and r’ared and the more radical among us
proclaimed that they wouldn’t eat or sleep with them damn N-
—-s. There were threats of violence from the redder-necked
of us who bragged about what they would so.
Of course, we didn’t have a choice who the replacements
would be. We were in the Army and we would obey orders. It
was made quite plain to us that we WOULD obey orders.
Sure enough, some of the replacements were Blacks. There
was some muttering and grumbling, but no violence occurred.
It wasn’t long until the Blacks were accepted and proceeded to
do their jobs just like the rest of us. Integration turned out to
be ridiculously easy. If a man did his job, he was accepted.
My prediction, based on my experience, is that the same thing
will happen with homosexuals when DADT is repealed. If they
do their jobs they will be accepted. Everyone will obey orders.
Interestingly, I will have seen two major prejudices eliminated
in my lifetime. Maybe there is hope for the human race after
all.
I posted these same comments under the Manchin item, but I had intended to put them here: I am thrilled to see DADT put down. I am sure the roll-out of policy will be far more complicated and therefore slower than I can comprehend as a non-military man, but still. progress.
For me, growing up straight, knowing from my own experience that whom I love and whom I lust after is so central to my identity and happiness I cannot imagine having to be the least bit reserved about it — much having to lie and hide it completely! I am sickened that this Kafkaesque policy has gone on as long as it has.
It is beyond ironic that McCain and those other craven GOP scoundrels have taken the position they have. First of all, DADT is a lousy half-baked Clintonian compromise of a policy. As Lt Dan Choi has bravely pointed out : DADT institutionalized lying, and honesty is supposedly one of the highest values of military code and comportment. The GOP rallied around a policy designed to reward the men and women of the armed services for lying. Maybe that’s no real surprise after all, as the right seems to trade chiefly in lies nowadays.
And secondly, perhaps more importantly, the right has been breathtakingly vague: are they against homosexuals serving? Then where was the GOP bill that restored the pre-DADT order? Ultimately, that is the most appalling and damning thing about the right in America today: when progressives take a position, we bring it up in a bill. We utilitze the system as it was designed by our Founding Fathers, whom the right claim to love so dearly. They, on the other hand, shilly-shally and take passive aggressive positions and constantly obstruct progress without clearly stating a true conservative way forward.
Why? Because of course they know they would lose at the polls if they did. They are holding on, and may continue to do so with the help of Fox News and reactionary billionaire cash, but it is only by the skin of their teeth.
So God Bless America for yet another great leap forward. May this be another advance on the road toward full and normalized citizenship for our LGBT brothers and sisters.