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DADT: Memorial Day Marks 70 Years of Discrimination Against Gay Service Members

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Memorial Day is the 70th year of anti-gay discrimination officially embedded in military policy, despite the false belief that DADT has been repealed.

Today marks Memorial Day, a somber day in American life when we honor the service of those who gave their lives, the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the people of the United States of America. This Memorial Day also bitterly marks the 70th year in American history in which government-sanctioned discrimination continues to be enforced against gays and lesbians serving in military. Contrary to what too many believe, the policy and practice of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) remains in place until the repeal is fully implemented.

Memorial Day also reminds that today is the 159th day since President Barack Obama signed the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, which forces gay and lesbian service members to remain in the military closet, stripped of their right to speak freely about their lives, or face a punitive discharge from the military because of their sexual orientation.

Since 1941 millions of gay and lesbian Americans have served, despite various incantations of the same gay ban—“homosexuality is incompatible with military service”–policy which remained in place during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Grenada and Panama actions, Desert Storm, and through the Kosovo humanitarian intervention.

President Bill Clinton called DADT “an honorable compromise,” in 1993, when we lost the effort to repeal the gay ban. Thus, this Memorial Day also marks the 18th year of DADT as the policy of our government. That fact infuriates me.

We are now entering the sixth month since President Obama proclaimed the somewhat misleading words “It is done!” which he uttered when he ceremoniously signed the repeal bill, witnessed by 500 veterans activists and members of Congress who had worked years for its repeal. It feels as if we witnessed a bizarre version of  “Kabuki” theater, myself having attended the signing ceremony of the repeal of DADT to such pomp and circumstance.

 

We should take nothing for granted and hold President Obama and Congress accountable for complete and final repeal. Let us continue the fight and truly honor Memorial Day by establishing a state of equality that enables us to pay tribute to our dead, openly, knowing we are all free to say “I am gay” without fear and retribution.


 

We were reminded in April by the White House (and should have not be lulled into thinking that anything had changed–at least not yet,) when Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) and Dr. Jill Biden launched “Joining Forces” a campaign for military families, explicitly excluding gay families, for the time being, until, well, the DADT policy was repealed.

When the White House was questioned if the initiative would include gay families, FLOTUS spokesperson Kristen Schake  threw cold water on that notion by saying in a statement to the MetroWeekly, “The President has been crystal clear that the Administration is moving forward with the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ quickly and efficiently. However, it still remains the law. The White House, including the First Lady and Dr. Biden, look forward to working with the families of gay and lesbian service members after certification occurs and repeal goes into effect.”

Adding insult to injury to this deliberative and painstakingly-slow implementation process were the actions of the Republican-led House of Representatives last week which passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that contained three anti-gay, anti-DADT repeal amendments.

Easily carried in a 322-96 majority vote and supported by a number of Democrats, one new hurdle has been added to an already onerous process, as the stridently anti-gay Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) sponsored the required formal concurrence of the service chiefs, along with the already required signatures of the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs. Other amendments include a restatement of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and a specific prohibition use of military facilities or personnel for same-sex marriage ceremonies.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-MjLWkDNqY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

In fact, complete repeal of DADT is far from done, despite the president’s misleading words. Obama had negotiated an agreement with the Department of Defense (DOD) leadership that provided for a deliberative and unnecessarily-long process that must culminate in a signed notification to Congress by the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs.

DADT remains very much in place, as a policy, while the military implements the recommendations of the Department of Defense Comprehensive Working Group report that includes DOD-wide training program, carried out by each service of how straight servicemembers are expected to treat gay and lesbian colleagues and to become well versed on the standards of conduct.

Will this be the last Memorial Day that discrimination remains the DOD standard mode of operation? Will July 4th mark the last day of independence in which the government of the United States continues to discriminate against those who are gay and lesbian and serve in the ranks?

I hope so.  The White House issued a statement rejecting the House’s actions. But I do not take anything for granted and neither should members of  the LGBT community. The Republicans have made clear they are not going down without a fight and drag out the final steps for complete repeal of DADT as long as they can. Coupled with the national Tea Party antics, as evidenced in the Walker takeover in Wisconsin, their efforts have made clear, rule of law be damned—are cautionary tales.

President Obama said it best at the signing ceremony when he stated America “is not a country of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” As a child growing up in the 1960s I always thought America was the country of “can do”–we were taught to believe that Americans can do anything, as long as we put our minds to a task and work hard.

And yet, today, despite the president’s soaring rhetoric,  I am not counting down the days to repeal because there is no line of demarcation that moves us to a date of destiny, free of discrimination. The process negotiated beween the president and the Pentagon was left to be a dangerously open-ended, one that has been pounced upon by Republican opponents.

READ: DADT: For Memorial Day Jewish Women Demand Congress End Repeal Opposition

Instead, all of us should stay on top of this legislation and ride herd on it all the way to Obama’s desk for his final, final signature. Are you convinced the Democrats are going to stand behind the plan?

I am not, despite national polling data that just keeps getting better and better for the LGBT community.

A recent Gallup poll recorded in excess of 50 percent support by respondents in a national survey on gay marriage is maddening irrelevant to cautious politicians–the poll numbers on gays in the military have enjoyed some of the highest numbers in support of gay rights in the history of poll-taking on gay issues. But poll numbers don’t matter to legislators who have feet made of clay or who simply view gays not worthy of equal citizenship.

So, we should take nothing for granted and hold President Obama and Congress accountable for complete and final repeal. Let us continue the fight and truly honor Memorial Day by establishing a state of equality that enables us to pay tribute to our dead, openly, knowing we are all free to say “I am gay” without fear and retribution. This liberty is the most honorable tribute we can bestow on America’s mostly unsung and unknown LGBT heroes of the past 235 years.

(image: dbking, “12,000 Flags for 12,000 Patriots”, 2007)


Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom.

Read Tanya Domi’s most-recent previous article at The New Civil Rights Movement, “DADT: For Memorial Day Jewish Women Demand Congress End Repeal Opposition.”

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Election Denialism Embraced by ‘Large Proportion’ of Trump’s Followers: Report

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May 2, 2024

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Since at least 2012 Donald Trump has been engaging in election denialism. Now, a tenet of the Republican Party, the refusal to accept official election results they don’t like is ingrained in a large number of his followers.

“I think that the powers that be on the Democratic side have figured out a way to circumvent democracy,” Darlene Anastas, 69, of Middleborough, Massachusetts, told NBC News. The network “spoke to more than 50 Trump supporters, most of whom said they don’t believe Biden can win legitimately in November.”

“Poll after poll,” NBC also reported, “has found that a large proportion of the Republican electorate believes the only reasons Joe Biden is president are voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks, buying into former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.”

NBC spoke with 72-year old George Crosby, from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, who said, Democrats “cheat like crazy” (video below).

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“I think they cheated before, and I think they’re going to try to do it again, because they’re a bunch of communists,” Fitzwilliam added.

38-year old James Russon of Eagle Mountain, Utah told NBC, “There’s no way Biden could legally … win without unfair means.”

“He added that the only way Biden could prevail would be through ‘cheating’ or ‘a lot of deceased people voting.'”

62-year old Randall Minicola of Las Vegas said it would be “impossible” for Biden to win. “I don’t think he’s got a following. I mean, you look who’s behind him — the only thing he’s got is ghosts behind him. That’s what I believe. Where’s the supporters then? Are they in the basement with him? I don’t think so.”

NBC News did not report on where these particular GOP voters got their information or how they came to believe these claims, but it did note the “possibility of another election in which large numbers of Republicans refuse to accept a Biden victory has also been stoked by influential conservatives.”

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Trump’s election denialism is so strong that in 2020 CNN published “A list of the times Trump has said he won’t accept the election results or leave office if he loses.”

Election denialism continues to be spread throughout the right.

“A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world unless there’s fraud,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in March, NBC noted. Carlson, a purveyor of conspiracy theories, has spoken very positively about Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, and against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Numerous studies and fact checks have found mail-in voting to be safe and secure, with little opportunity for fraud, yet just last week Carlson, like Trump, was claiming massive election fraud. Undermining Americans’ faith in democracy was a main goal of Russian President Putin’s 2016 attack on the U.S. elections, according to a 2017 report issued by a group of U.S. Intelligence agencies.

But just last week Carlson claimed, “About one in five mail-in ballots in the last election was fraudulent, handing Biden the presidency. We know this because the people who committed the fraud have admitted it in a new poll.”

A portion of NBC’s report from Thursday also appears in this January 2024 NBC News video.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won

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May 2, 2024

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Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.

In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.

The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”

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“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.

In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.

“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”

Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.

“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”

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In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”

He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.

Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.

After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”

“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter

One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.

Watch the video above or at this link.

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‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

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May 2, 2024

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President Joe Biden made rare, unscheduled remarks from the White House Thursday morning, denouncing the recent violent protests on college campuses, and telling Americans there is “no place” for antisemitism anywhere across the nation. He also denounced “hate speech” and “racism,” while declaring his support for the right to peacefully protest.

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” President Biden declared. “There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said strongly. “Peaceful protest is.”

Stressing “the right to free speech,” and the people’s right “to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard,” President Biden also declared the importance of “the rule of law.”

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“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” the President also said, praising the ideal of peaceful protests, which he said are in the “best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.”

“But,” he added, “neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society and order must prevail.”

America is a “big, diverse, free thinking and freedom-loving nation,” Biden said, denouncing those “who rush in to score political points.”

“This isn’t a moment for politics, it’s a moment for clarity.”

“It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he warned. “Threatening people, intimidating people. instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish a semester and their college education.”

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“Look. It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

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The President also responded to reporters’ questions, including saying he saw no need to call up the National Guard.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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