Adam Serwer documents the deals made to prevent one continuing injustice by sacrificing another. He links to Lynn Sweet who writes that the Illinois GOP delegation was responsible for getting the ban on federal funds for civilian, criminal trials for Guantanamo detainees, ostensibly because they fear the transfer of those detainees to a prison in Illinois.
There's more to the story, though, as Adam notes. Politico reports that the ban was required for the DADT repeal to move forward.
That might have alienated liberals like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), but he spoke on the House floor in support of the bill. Frank told POLITICO agreeing to ban detainee transfers was part of a larger House-Senate compromise that also involved passing "don’t ask don’t tell."
“I didn’t like that,” Frank said of the detainee transfer ban. But passing the bill to allow gays to serve openly in the military was more important, he said, adding that the detainee language would have returned in a spending bill. “We would have gotten stuck with that anyway.”
Since Guantanamo detainees are already imprisoned, I guess that makes them easy hostages to take. As Serwer says, it's an ugly trade, but hard to argue against:
A frustrating setback for justice in return for an irreversible milestone on the road to equality for gays and lesbians?
... The real danger is that the ban, like every "temporary" measure in the PATRIOT Act, becomes permanent in all but name.
That's a pretty likely result.