‘Don’t Ask’ Conundrum

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If nothing else, Log Cabin’s lawsuit to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell,” leading to a district court’s ruling barring enforcement of the policy, puts the White House on the spot. If the Obama Justice Department appeals, as it has just appealed a set of recent rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act, it won’t help shore up the Democrats’ liberal base. But it’s expected that lower court rulings invalidating laws passed by Congress should be appealed (although, apparently, there are exceptions). Obama has 60 days to decide. I expect he may wait until after the election and then appeal, although it would be uncharacteristically gutsy to announce the policy is now dead.

More. Obama Administration Requests Stay of Injunction Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Ruling. That didn’t take long. Our “fierce advocate” strikes again.

Furthermore. At least for now, Log Cabin Republicans Prevails Over President Obama. It’s a suit that the Human Rights Campaign and other Democratic party water-carriers would never have brought.

Still more. Obama’s Justice Dept. halts military equality, again.

9 Comments for “‘Don’t Ask’ Conundrum”

  1. posted by marcus on

    Obama ran for president promising repeal, and then sat on his hands for two years, including the year and a half when he had a supermajority in the Senate so the GOP couldn’t filibuster.

    Now he’s likely to appeal the court case so that DADT stays in effect — and the new Congress, with many more Republicans, will never repeal (and neither will the U.S. Supreme Court, IMHO).

    Republicans – bad. Obama and the Democrats – worthless.

  2. posted by james on

    aint gonna be no appeal… aint gonna be no gays in the service. aint gonna happen. if they let it happen then how will they tell gays that are dying for there country your not equal. at least now they can say your a gay and get out your not equal. it aint gonna happen with congress or any president it will only happen with the courts. religious zealots are in control.

  3. posted by John Howard on

    james – pls be more careful about there/their and your/you’re for readabillity’s sake. Typos and spelling mistakes are acceptable in comments, but those ones mess up the reader’s comprehension, making it harder to read. Also, the double negatives don’t work in print as well as they might in conversation. Also, repeated use of “it”, to refer back to something that wasn’t intelligible the first time isn’t at all helpful. In other words, huh?

  4. posted by John Howard on

    What’s with this advice?

    Many gay and lesbian groups praised the order, but Aaron Tax, legal director for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, predicted that the government would appeal.

    With that in mind, he said, homosexual “service members must proceed safely and should not come out at this time.”

    Shouldn’t lifting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell mean lifting the “Don’t Tell” part as well as the “Don’t Ask” part? Isn’t it violating some honesty code of the military to be in the closet but not coming out because of DADT, now that DADT is suspended? Shouldn’t Congress know what they are dealing with, in terms of specifically who would come out if DADT was lifted and all homosexuals were “out”?

  5. posted by Jorge on

    Suspended. If the government appeals, the policy may be reinstated.

    The military just isn’t going to be a place where we’ll see major grass-roots revolution.

  6. posted by Amicus on

    It’s not your father’s military…

    I’m looking at James’s comments, and I have to confess that, having dismissed high profile stories as broadly indicative, I’m late to waking up to the rise of ‘fundamentalism’ in the entire military.

    http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hj_WduJSd-7xIcenAGMSPeoCsImQ

  7. posted by Jorge on

    Interesting.

    Just a week ago I was reading someone bemoaning the fact that the banning of ROTC programs from elite Ivy League schools, ostensibly over Vietnam and then DA/DT, is leading to the military culture becoming different from that of the people.

  8. posted by Jorge on

    Obama Administration Requests Stay of Injunction Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. That didn’t take long. Our “fierce advocate” strikes again.

    The media’s analysis is convincing, but on second thought perhaps the liberal media is covering for him.

    When NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg authorized an appeal of an unfavorable gay marriage ruling against the city, the media covered his dialogue within the administration (the attorneys told him he had to do it), and he appeared before a gay audience the same day and explained his reasoning (they booed him). So I’ll give the president a couple of days to explain himself.

    I don’t expect much. This is a president who responds with arrogance rather than empathy every time a pro-gay heckler accosts him on the issue. He attacks them. He doesn’t take his lumps like Bloomberg did. I don’t think he’d ever speak before an audience he knows is going to boo him.

  9. posted by marcus on

    It’s a suit that the Human Rights Campaign and other Democratic party water-carriers would never have brought.

    What, they should sue Dear Leader? Perish the thought!

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