Joe Sudbay has an update on the DADT blogswarm a number of progressive blogs participated in yesterday, spurred by a new post at HuffPo by the Palm Center's Nathaniel Frank, one of the nation's leading experts on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Frank writes:
Yet despite the military's move to relax and soon do away with "don't ask, don't tell," repeal in Congress is in grave peril. This is so even though the much-vaunted super-majority in the senate is not necessary to repeal the current policy. As Sen. Carl Levin, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee explained to his colleague, Sen. Joe Lieberman, an amendment to repeal the policy can be added to the must-pass Defense Authorization bill, which would turn the tables on the "no-to-everything" Republicans: the amendment would require a supermajority not to pass, but to remove, meaning that in order to keep the ban in place, the GOP would have to block the entire Pentagon spending bill, publicly undercutting the military....
So what's the hold up? President Obama has said he will work with Congress "this year" to lift the ban. (Sen. Levin could put repeal into the Chairman's mark, but it's not clear he has the incentive to do so.) But Obama has also said he'd like Congress to take the lead. Sound familiar? In an interview in 2009, Obama finally acknowledged that this very same tactic with healthcare was a mistake: "I, out of an effort to give Congress the ability to do their thing and not step on their toes, probably left too much ambiguity out there, which allowed the opponents of reform to come in and to fill up the airwaves with a lot of nonsense." Sure enough, despite momentum toward repeal of the gay ban, the airwaves are beginning to fill with balderdash about openly gay service leading to a draft and, horror of horrors, government endorsement of tattoos.
Like the various bloggers who've been writing about this, Frank puts the responsibility for influencing Obama on the issue on the HRC, the most influential rights group in the gay community, which he says "has been accused of championing repeal publicly, while privately assuring the White House that it can continue to go slow."
Another organization is joining in the call to get HRC on board with this effort. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) blogs:
We join the blog swarm's call for DADT repeal this year. The best way to erase the law from the books in 2010 is for the Obama Administration to include repeal in the defense authorization bill and then for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to also include repeal of the law in the defense bill he reports out of his committee. Find out what you can do here.
As we have noted before, Congress must repeal DADT this year while the Department of Defense conducts its study. Both can and should happen concurrently. DoD's study Working Group should not hold up legislative repeal this year, since the study Working Group is not looking at if the law should be repealed but how.
We agree with Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) when he said earlier this month, "A study should not unduly delay taking our last steps toward final action." Congress must go ahead and do its part to dismantle the law now through the defense authorization bill, and the White House must be pushing that too.
This really is no longer the political hot potato it used to be. Rank and file members of the military have long gotten over having a problem with serving with gays and lesbians, and a solid majority of the American public doesn't care either. The White House including the repeal in its defense budget is the cleanest, quickest way to do it.