Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Congress Repeals DADT

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The final vote to repeal DADT was decided 65-31. We picked up Burr of North Carolina and Ensign of Nevada on the final vote. The measure now goes to the President. Champagne all around–this is the biggest victory in the history of the LGBT movement.  

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  2. Bigger than decriminalization of homosexuality?

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    p>Bigger than the end of it being officially classified as a disease?

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    p>Bigger than marriage equality in several states?

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    p>It’s a great thing, but it doesn’t overshadow greater things.

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    p>Next: The Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  It’s a travesty that that hasn’t passed yet.  And DOMA needs to be repealed.

    • Bigger than all those other things. This will do far more to convince the rest of the country that gay people should be treated equally and not discriminated against than anything else. If they can serve openly, honestly and be depended upon in times of war, why the hell can’t they get married? Or be hired? Etc. This will do a lot to move some of the final heel-draggers on this issue, IMO. This could certainly be a watershed moment for GLBT rights across the country that could put ENDA on the table this next session, and maybe even DOMA if we do well in next election cycle.  

    • is such a male debate.

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      p>This is important because it is Federal, passed by Congress and instead of some of the previous anti discrimination laws that say you can be who you are in your own homes or gay bars as long as we don’t have to see it. This says you can come play with us, kill, be killed and defend the country. In the very strong bond of the military, gays and lesbians are now recognized as belonging to the brotherhood or sisterhood.
      A big deal and long over due in coming.

    • What it is part of is the growing sense that gayness is unremarkable, so unremarkable that one of the institutions most aligned with traditionally masculine values need not be scorn it.

      • Actually, it depends where.  As with marriage, this is an ongoing thing – you know there are still countries where homosexuality is a crime, and hasn’t yet graduated to mere “disorder” status.  But even here in North America…

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        p>http://www.theglobeandmail.com…

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        p>However, even if it had already been done everywhere a decade ago, that wouldn’t meant it wasn’t a huge and important step forward.

    • …that this came before ENDA.  It would seem ending employment discrimination would be less controversial than DADT.

      • More like women getting equal pay for equal work, and fair working conditions.  I mean, since they got the vote in 1920, how long did it take them to accomplish those goals?

        • …military is more of a culture, and there are those who may be uncomfortable with sharing quarters.  Most other things are just jobs.  You work, you go home at the end of the day, and your sexual orientation is completely irrelevant.

          • My brother was a Navy lieutenant, and he never did.  Daughter was Guard, so didn’t really apply.  Uncle was a career officer, only spent a few years living on base. I was BORN on a base, but parents didn’t live there, just used that hospital. And that was THEN – I’m betting living off base is even more prevalant now.  

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            p>So circumstances are the same – you do your job, etc.  I actually think that’s why the survey of the military turned out the way it did – only a minority of military DO share quarters.

        • And I would also point out that DADT not only affects one employer, but affects a government employer. Ending private-sector employment discrimination in this area would be even more complicated if a major government employer was still discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

    • None of those required a vote of two houses of the Congress and a signature of the President of the United States.

  4. I’m glad the President will sign this, I’m glad he got his act together on this in final few days of this legislative session… but make no mistake, this got done because of the left rising up and demanding it get done, and because of a few people in the Senate and in Congress who refused to let it die. Joe Lieberman did a lot more to get this done than President Obama — which is a pretty scary thought. This isn’t really the big win for the President that you seem to think.  

    • you have no idea who did more to get it done.  There’s no question that Lieberman worked the press hard on the issue and appeared to be pushing for it in the Senate.  But Obama did make plenty of public comments on it, and there’s no way to know how hard he worked on the 10ish US Senators who were considered on the fence.

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      p>I think it’s a huge win for POTUS.  Bigots were already voting against him.  Moderates were likely to shrug on the issue.  It energizes liberals — both gay and straight.

      • for an obscenely long time. Gibbs admitted as much. I’ve dropped the quote in the form of a link on more than one occasion on BMG…

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        p>BTW: I don’t disagree that this is a huge win for him… it will save the entire GLBT part of the base who were already giving up on the POTUS and didn’t turn out to nearly the same extent in the past election… among others. My only point, though, is he wasn’t as involved as we would have liked. If he had, this would have happened a while ago.

      • doesn’t just work behind the scenes. He was notably hands-off on this issue for a very long time from the public’s perspective. He won’t get much credit on this one, which is unfortunate for him.

    • When the Senate refuses to pass something good, (even w/ 50+ votes) it’s Obama’s fault.

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      p>And when it passes something good, it’s credit to Joe Lieberman.

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      p>I hear you loud and clear. Roger, over and out.

      • which Obama has not really figured out how to use yet, nor has he matched LBJ’s legendary “treatment” of Senators to get what he wanted.  He makes a speech every now and then and claimed DADT was a priority, then nothing.  Sure I’m glad he’s POTUS given that McCain is now finding every excuse not to support it, but I too saw Lieberman pushing harder than he did.

      • When the Senate refuses to pass something good after Obama was put some effort into passing it, it’s the Senate’s fault.

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        p>If the Senate doesn’t pass it, and Obama goes back on a campaign promise to do something worthwhile to pass it, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

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        p>Just how low are your standards for this guy?

          • for his routine failure to meet his promises — or even be willing to fight hard for them. He’s our President, it doesn’t work the other way around. I’ll give credit where credit is due — for example, if/when START passes, Obama’s truly stood up for that one and kept it alive — but I’m not going to go out of my way to praise him over an issue where he was dragged kicking and screaming.

            • So did Clinton.  And Carter.  And pretty much every president, even JFK and FDR.  The difference being that those guys fought for their promises.  They played and lost.

              • It is frustrating that it feels like the biggest sales job he’s done in 2 years is selling Democrats on tax cuts for the rich, which he agreed to after what must have been truly an intense 10 minutes of negotiation.

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                p>Those of us on the left who feel we’re getting absolutely crushed on almost everything do need a champion, and we look to the President for leadership. Apparently we need to be looking to Bernie Sanders, because the president is fighting his way to the middle. Maybe that’s the best he thinks he can do, because the rest of our country is pushing hard to the right? I don’t buy it.

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                p>All that said, god our country is so delicately in the balance right now, and I cannot fathom any way I won’t be supporting a second term (with money and as a volunteer), hopefully turning back this tide of conservatism in the process. Unbelievable, but the other options are truly nightmarish.  

                • I love the guy, but I’m not sure he’s presidential material, and fatally, he’d possibly agree with that.  I just think that if a candidate tries to be a blank slate onto which activists can paint their ideals, then that should set off alarm bells.  Obama ran very much as a centrist who didn’t want to invade Iraq, and for some reason people embraced him as an anti-war leftist.  Granted, Obama certainly didn’t argue.  The fact that perception is essential to nomination is a good thing, the fact that perception was bestowed with little diligence isn’t.  

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                  p>As for a term II, in the fields that I care most about — education, foreign policy, and religious freedom — Bush and Obama aren’t easy to distinguish.  I’ll likely sit 2012 out on the presidential level.

      • The effort that it took to reverse a policy seared into place by the firestorm over gays in the military in 1993 is so vast that credit must be shared all around. Lieberman comes out of this fight looking good, as does Scott Brown, yet Obama’s credibility on the left was so caught up in the success of this enterprise that he cannot but benefit, and rightly so. He was being written off as dead meat a few short weeks ago, and now he is leading all the major Republicans in polls looking to 2012. (Romney is closest.)

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        p>Credt is not diminished because it must be spread around. Collectively we changed the culture between 1993-2000. That process drew upon the energy and exertions of untold millions. Then there’s the task of translating popular support into public policy outcomes, which had seemed nearly impossible until it happened. That took the work of hundreds of thousands over many years. Big changes don’t happen anymore because Henry VIII wants a divorce-democracy turns all of us into decision-makers.

        • It is more important to be consistent than to share credit. Credit must never be shared with people who are Wrong. In fact, this principle is even more important than Victory itself.

          • As a progressive I was heartbroken with the votes of Scott Brown and other Republicans against the Dream Act. That bill would have been transformative for our society. But, even if only by bowing to political reality in the Bay State Brown contributed to the effectuation of desireable change.

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            p>I think the synergy of activists is the irreducible minimum for change like this to occur. I am in awe of what LGBT people collectively have been able to accomplish in 41 years.  

    • What will it take for you to give Obama credit for anything?

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      p>I second Charley’s comments above, about the discrepancy between Obama being blamed when things don’t move and getting little credit when they do.

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      p>I’d add that Obama had a hell of a lot to do with the DADT repeal becoming law. The most obvious one is that he will sign the bill into law — something a President McCain surely wouldn’t do.

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      p>But he also worked hard to get Secretary Gates and other military personnel to get out in front on this issue. Indeed, the way the issue was handled was an example of excellent political strategy. Obama and the Democrats out-manuvered the Republicans on the issue, gaining everything they wanted in a complete repeal of DADT, forcing the Republicans to take a tough vote (given public opinion on the issue) thereby splitting the Republicans in Congress, and making one of the Republicans’ putative leaders (McCain) look like an absolute out-of-touch fool on this issue.

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      p>Regardless of what you think of his performance on other issues, Obama deserves tons of credit on this. So do Lieberman, the few Republicans voting for repeal, and the civil rights activists who kept pushing to make this day a reality.

  5. (@#$%$%^ Obama can’t get anything done. – promoted by Charley on the MTA)

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    p>Well, ’tis the season for religious expression…

  7. this is the biggest victory in the history of the LGBT movement

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    p>I will add the phrase thus far, since ‘history’ is both past, present, and future and one would hope this is just the first step of many. It took nearly two hundred years, a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and many more hundreds that died or had their lives ruined fighting Jim Crow, in order for that first great stain on our republic to finally be extinguished. While it took a lot less time to take us from Stonewall to this day then it did to take us from July 4th 1776 to Jan 20th 2009, one hopes the next decade will see a flurry of progress on this front, and one hopes Obama of all leaders understands the urgency as he should, since he wouldn’t be here if we had just trusted in compromise, Senate, gradualism, and procedure as Kennedy did regarding civil rights. This is the last great frontier of civil rights and equality for all Americans and it should be a priority for this President. Liberals will flock to it because it is the right thing to do, moderates and independents will as well, partly because they are moving in that direction as well, and because they reward decisive leadership above all else. So its a big win for all involved. But as that old sage Dylan once said, ‘the tide it is turned, the curtain its cast, the slow ones now will later be fast, as the present ones now, will later be last, your old road is rapidly aging, so get onto the new one if you can lend your hand for the times they are a changing’.  

  8. This legislative victory is unique in LGBT movement history. When the American Psychiatric Association dropped homosexuality from its nomenclature of disease, that laid the groundwork for change to come. It’s taken since then (1973-74) to change the culture enough so that LGBT folks can serve openly in the military. Decriminalization of homosexuality was a series of piecemeal victories followed by a Supreme Court decision which brought stragglers along in 2003. Nothing rivals today’s vote in terms of the magnitude of the political accomplishment and the collective activist effort invested in it.

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