You’ll remember “Section 8” most from the 1970s TV series M*A*S*H, when Corporal Klinger tried to use it to obtain a psychiatric discharge. Section 8, (the rather offensive) military code used in World War II and the 1950s for discharging those deemed “unfit” for duty — generally for reasons related to “sexual perversion” or homosexuality — is antiquated and no longer serves the military’s reality. Nor does “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Homosexuality is no reason for a psychiatric — or any type of discharge — or for anything else. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” not the proud men and women it is used against, deserves a dishonorable discharge. Let’s kick DADT out of the military, and keep its 66,000 LGBTQ active service members in our armed forces.
Tonight, in his State of the Union address, President Obama is expected to speak about the future of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” What will he say? My guess is he will order Congress to investigate its repeal and work to repeal it quickly. I doubt he’ll order a “stop-loss” action, preventing the military from discharging any more service members under DADT.
Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog today quotes Kerry Eleveld as saying,
“The options range from a passing mention or a reiteration of his intent to end the gay ban to the announcement of a commission to study the policy to laying out a specific strategy for repeal.”
Let’s hope the latter.
In Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, former senior Clinton White House adviser Richard Socarides wrote,
“An increasingly frustrated bloc of gay voters—angry over marriage setbacks in California, Maine, New Jersey and New York and emboldened by Ted Olson’s and David Boies’s high-profile effort to declare unconstitutional laws that prohibit gay marriage—are growing impatient for equality. As Mr. Olson said in federal district court in San Francisco recently, discriminatory laws serve only to “label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal and disfavored.”
Between 56% and 79% of Americans support allowing LGBTQ Americans to serve openly in the military.
Conservative blogger AllahPundit on Monday wrote,
“The politics of it are a no-brainer. He desperately needs to throw the left a bone, especially if Reid and Pelosi are about to choke on ObamaCare, and this is one of the easiest he could throw them. Not only did he order the surge in Afghanistan, bolstering his hawkish credentials, but DADT actually polls badly among the public. A WaPo/ABC survey taken two years ago showed three-quarters of the public support letting gays serve; a Quinnipiac poll taken last year had narrower numbers but still a heavy majority in favor of repealing the policy — 56/37, including 50/43 among voters with family in the military. He’s got plenty of political cover, in other words. In fact, I wonder if the big reason Obama has held back on this until now (and, maybe, on gay marriage) is precisely because he’s thinking strategically and wants to be able to toss it out there when he most needs a boost from his base. This ought to do it.”
I agree. Strange.
For more on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and the State of the Union, read Chris Geidner’s “My Hopes for the State of the Union” at Law Dork.