Posted on 06/30/2009 2:47:11 PM PDT by jazusamo
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday that the Pentagon is looking into “more humane” ways to comply with a law that bans openly gay people from serving in the military.
Gates said that the Pentagon’s general counsel is exploring ways of making the law, known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” more flexible until it is eventually changed, according to the Pentagon’s news service.
Gates' remarks, made aboard a military plane on the way to Germany on Tuesday, come one day after President Obama reiterated his support for repealing the 1993 ban during a reception with gay and lesbian advocacy groups.
The Obama administration has come under criticism from gay-rights advocates for not moving fast enough on a presidential campaign pledge made by Obama.
“What we have is a law, not a policy or regulation,” Gates said on Tuesday, according to the American Forces Press Service. “And as I discovered when I got into it, it is a very prescriptive law. It doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination or a lot of flexibility. So one of the things we are looking at is, is there flexibility in how we apply this law?”
Gates indicated that Pentagon lawyers are researching whether military officials can ignore the policy in cases where members of the military are “outed” against their will.
“Does that force us to take an action?” he asked. “I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t want to pretend to. But that is the kind of thing we are looking at.”
Gates said he believed that there is “at least a more humane way to comply with the law until the law gets changed.”
The Clinton-era law prohibits officials from inquiring into a military member’s sexual orientation but allows the services to take action against those members who disclose their homosexuality by word or action.
The White House had previously said it would not stop prosecutions of military members whose sexual orientation is made public against their wishes.
Last week 77 House Democrats sent a letter to Obama asking him to stop all prosecutions under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until Congress can overturn the policy.
More than 250 gay and lesbian service members have been discharged under the law since Obama took office January 20.
Gates, you are an idiot.
Of all the things our government should be worrying about, getting around established law should not be one of them.
It doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination or a lot of flexibility. So one of the things we are looking at is, is there flexibility in how we apply this law?”
HUH?
If the law is not flexible then its application should not be flexible either. If it is the law, follow it...........
Gates said that the Pentagon’s general counsel is exploring ways of making the law, known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” more flexible until it is eventually changed,
CHANGED?
Why would the law be chagned. It is there for a reason.
Bump to you both!
Transfer all the fags to one location (like Tierra del Fuega) and track the progress of "progress". Then use that data to change the law as necessary.
We can all bet it’ll be changed because Zer0 and the Rats want it changed.
Every time liberals even mention homosexuals in the military, some homosexuals, or those accused of being homosexuals, are murdered.
These homicides are never associated with the victim’s homosexuality, or the assumption of homosexuality, by military authorities, but that belief is the proximate motive used by the killers.
Military authorities know that if they admit that so much as a single one of the motives of these homicides are correctly ascribed to the homosexuality of the victim, they and their command will be subjected to fearsome oppression and investigated.
So liberal Democrats could even demand a hiring preference for homosexuals by the military, and all that would result would be a growing number of individuals murdered. Eventually, even homosexuals themselves would realize that being homosexual in the military is a death sentence.
As many homosexuals as who would want to serve, there are ten times as many military personnel willing to kill them to keep them out, and these personnel are far more important to the military mission than homosexuals could ever be.
Importantly, this is not comparable to military race relations, which while strained, almost never become lethal.
Isn’t “humane” the sort of word you use right before you gas an unwanted puppy?
Oh oh... I don't like this.... that means the fags are putting pressure on the military to 'accept' them as the feminine as they are?
CAN YOU PICTURE THE MILITARY WITH THE LITTLE "LADIES" ROAMING THEMSELVES AROUND THE BASES... Yuchh.....
Spay and Neuter them.
You make good points.
Obama is planning on forming the Gay Brigade.
And his a queer too!
“Humane” isn’t really an appropriate guiding principle for our military. “Accomplish the mission” is an appropriate guiding principle, and “humane” can be thrown in when and where it doesn’t interfere with “accomplish the mission”. The idiotically inflexible “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule has been applied in ways that interfere with accomplishing the mission, including cases of much-needed experts in obscure languages being tossed out (and many more simply deciding not to apply in the first place, because they’re not willing to play the stupid “don’t ask, don’t tell” game). The rule also seems to explicitly encourage deceptive behavior by military personnel towards their peers and superiors, and I don’t see how that helps promote the “accomplish the mission” goal either.
The politically incorrect truth is that gay *men* pose a significant problem for troop morale and cohesiveness in settings where troops are housed together in close quarters with little or no privacy, but gay *women” do not pose this problem (as a group — there are always individual exceptions, but there are also individual exceptions where heterosexual behavior on the part of men or women causes problems), nor do gay men in settings where they are not housed in barracks and are performing highly skilled work (like language specialists, computer specialists, etc). And we don’t have one politician in either major party who’s willing to point this out and propose acting in accordance with it. For all of them, accomplishing the mission is secondary to spouting political BS to soothe one constituency or another.
Gates is Obama’s boy now.
Agreed, he fell right in step with Zer0.
Gates is a dem tool. That’s why he’s got the job.
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