People are still being discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
There's a current bill in Congress which has passed in the House and has been added to the Senate's defense authorization bill after passing its Armed Services Committee. But it's not a "DADT repeal bill." In fact, what it does is allow the White House and Pentagon to sign off on future repeal and then implement that future repeal at some point if and when they choose to and if and when their "study" on gayness comes back and doesn't say anything too negative about the gays.
Because we all know that repealing discrimination against gays should always be contingent on whether or not others will be uncomfortable with it. And if it happens at all, the repeal bill does not contain nondiscrimination language. So Congress will have struck out the lines on DADT in the US Code but they will not have replaced it with nondiscrimination language nor urged the military to adopt nondiscrimination policies. The repeal bill takes us back to just before Bill Clinton passed DADT. It takes us back to Reagan's antigay military orders which are in place to this day and are untouched with this current bill - unless they feel like dealing with it.
At Netroots Nation I asked Senator Merkley about this. I asked him about whether or not Congress is completely washing its hands of this responsibility with this bill, or if they can go back if they choose - meaning, if the military does not enforce antidiscrimination policies nor make any real changes.
He pretty much said, "Look, we're just trying to do this right now, pass the bill and allow the military to work on its regulations which I'm sure will get rid of antigay policy. I'm confident they will." That's great but some of us aren't so confident.
And of course, keep in mind that the bill is in real danger of not passing. Senator Webb opposes repeal. Senator McCain opposes repeal. Others keep asking if we really want to "experiment" with the military during wartime. If they don't lead a filibuster on the authorization bill over the DADT issue there are still other issues. The President has said he'd veto the defense bill if money is in there for a plane he and the Secretary of Defense do not want. So even this non-repeal repeal bill that's not even good might not even pass in the first place.
President Obama has said he opposes the policy and that it will be repealed. Gibbs famously answered the question of whether or not DADT will be repealed by shortly answering "Yes." The President is also ordering for DADT to be defended in court. Apparently the thing is, gay people will shower with straight people and ruin unit cohesion. That's what they said in court. The DOJ also used the Palm Center's research to say this, and distorted it unethically for their own ends.
Having seen his "fierce" opposition to the policy, I'm not surprised to learn that since 2009 he's been firing not only the most needed troops but he's also fired women, blacks and Asians at drastically higher rates.
The data released Monday morning show that discharges included 8 linguists, 20 infantrymen, 16 medical aides, 7 combat engineers, 6 missile artillery operating crew members, one member of the Special Forces, and others, according to a news release from the Palm Center.
We all know those linguists and medical aides can cause some real trouble if we allow them to be gay in our military. We can't have gay people translating terrorists' statements or tending to the medical needs of our troops. Gay people might... well, I don't really know what we might do. But it would be bad. Really bad. I'm sure there was some good reason to fire a bunch of the most useful gay soldiers in combat right now. There just has to be something. Surely the President wouldn't talk about how Afghanistan is so necessary and how we're there to "win" but then on the other hand fire our winners for their orientations. That just doesn't seem like the best plan to me.
"In the Navy, two officers were discharged in FY 2009 and both were Asian," said the release. "In the Army, of the five Officers discharged, two were African American, one was Asian and two were white."
[...]
"Although women comprise only 14% of the Army, lesbians received 48% of the Army’s ‘don¹t ask, don’t tell’ discharges in FYI 2009. In the Marines, women comprise just 6% of the force, but received 23% of discharges under the policy. The numbers represent a dramatic shift from last year, when women received 36% of Army discharges and 18% of Marine Corps discharges. In the Air Force, women comprise 20% of the service but received 51% of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ discharges in FY 2009. Women comprise 14% of the Navy but received 27% of the discharges last year.
So the President is actually firing women, blacks and Asians at really high rates. Why is this happening? Why isn't he doing anything? He could stop discharges today. He could sign an executive order stopping them, which would not at all affect legislative repeal, which should still happen - because it's the only permanent way to repeal DADT if it's done right. An executive order can be overturned by the next president, but it would only be temporary, to call for a moratorium on discharges until the repeal passes.
Or he could issue a stop-loss order until repeal passes. This are all very easy, non politically-costly things he could do right now with the stroke of a pen. And it would end all of this insanity.
Women and minorities are huge targets for job discrimination whether they're gay or not. Gay women and minorities make it that much harder to get and keep a job. In the military where it's mandatory to fire you for being gay then you better not be something noticeable like a gay woman or a gay black guy. You better be a gay white male.
If we already know that women and minorities have a harder time and the DoD has called for a "more humane" approach (to discrimination) in which they relax the policy, then why doesn't their "more humane" approach (to discrimination) affect women and ethnic minorities differently? Why's there nothing in place to make sure that women and minorities are treated more humanely? Why is the country's first African American president not taking notice that he's firing so many women and minorities? The guy knows how women and minorities are hurt by this. One of the first things he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He knows the deal. Why is he letting this be his legacy?
