Senate Passes Bill to Lift Military Gay Ban

WSJ On-Line ^ | 12/18/10 | NATHAN HODGE

[Pontiac]

The Senate Saturday repealed the military's ban on gays serving openly in the military, by overturning the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Senators voted 63-33 to advance the bill to the floor, passing a 60-vote procedural hurdle. Final passage Saturday afternoon was 65-31.

[KoRn]

I love the military.

Unfortunately, now I would NEVER encourage either my sons or daughters to join.

The fags will now own it.

[dixiedarlindownsouth]

I am not at all sensitive to “ignorance..” I enjoy it actually. Got a good chuckle tonight. Thanks for that. The only thing that you can contribute to a conversation about the repeal of DADT is a comment about an apostrophe? But we all contribute where we can right? Solider on there buddy.

*This post is certified to be free of any grammatical errors which would offend the great arthurus. But as for content..wellll..can't be so sure of that. Take care FRiend.

[2harddrive]

Give it 2-3 years - they will have PINK TANKS!!! Believe it! Wait till the Army has Gay Pride day!

[danielmryan]

According to some things I’ve read approximately 33% or better of your COMBAT troops [the ones that matter] will not re-enlist or will leave the services if they can.

Were there any predictions about the desertion rate going up?

[scbison]

I was thinking the same thing.. If a soldier gets captured by taliban, will they execute him right away because they assume he is a homosexual. I am interested how the oligarchy reacts when something like this happens.

[oldleft]

I never heard of that kind of thing, but I’m sure it happened. When I served you just knew who was gay. When we went out in Hong Kong we went to certain places. Some guys disappeared. I didn’t talk about my sexual exploits and vice versa. I’m afraid this will change that. I disagree with the lifestyle, but I disagree with the Mormon lifestyle as well. It doesn’t mean they aren’t some damn fine people. I just don’t want to hear about it.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

It wasn’t an insult....just an observation that you had never been in the military and was probably a butt boy given your ignorant responses....I stand by my observation

[Nowhere Man]

I disagree. “Live and let live” applies equally to the soldier's who don't want this reprobate life style jammed down their throats. And to the ones who will now have to sit through “sensitivity” training and the endless E.O. classes I don't want to walk into the commissary with my three year old son and watch a couple of “men” holding hands and playing house. Keep sex in the bedroom and out of the uniform. That's what “Don't ask Dont tell” was supposed to be about. Pass all the laws that they want. This life style will never be “acceptable” to the vast number of American’s. Our military was the last sane place in America. But we seemed to have lost the war with this one.

I can see where goldstategop is coming from, I do think DADT is/was a good compromise. However, I don't like the openess of one's sexual orientation in the military because I do believe it would wreck morale, something we don't need. If it was an office environment or some other workplace thing, I would not care of a person was homosexual or straight, he takes it home at the end of the day and I take mine home. I have a few gay friends and I would never, ever want to see harm come to them and would defend them. They have every right to live wherever they want to and work whererever they want to as long as they have the money and qualifications

The military is a different animal. With the exception on the choice of joining, it is not a volunteer thing, you are assigned whomever and wherever with little or no say. They are there to defend us, not be a social experiment or statement. At the very least, this requires a lot more study but I think DADT should remain in place.

[Nowhere Man]

I share your sense of pessimism. I turned 63 last month. When I was 20 if someone told me how screwed the United States would be in 2010, I would have said he was crazy.

I'm 44 and had you come to me in 1984, heck, even in 2004, and told me that Obama would be President and all of this would happen, I would have laughed hard at you and ask, "what have you been smokin'?!" Now, I might say, "pass it over here, I need a hit." B-) B-(

Mom said that if I came to her as a time traveller to 1956 when she graduated high school and told her all of this, she would not have believed it either, then on the other hand, she'd be scared for the future.

[scottywr]

I spoke to my son tonight who is The Air Force..... Needless to say he and his buddies are pissed. They feel That their service and well being have been sold down the river..... he is in his first year of a six year enlistment.... He is just so mad tonight he couldn’t put it into words... Pray for our sons and daughters.....

[Taxman]

The sanctimonious, politically correct a$$holes in the White House, Pentagon and Congress will never have to suffer the consequences of this horrendous decision!

Just as taxpayers suffer when “government” makes REALLY BAD economic decisions, it is the troops at the point of the spear who will suffer the disastrous consequences of this REALLY, REALLY BAD social engineering experiment.

And, ultimately, when our military is gutted by this PC crowd, the United States of America will pay the price by having a much less capable and effective military.

I served for 28 1/2 years in the Navy and Naval Reserve, and I can tell you, flat out — take it to the bank! that having homosexuals serving openly in the military service will not work!

[schwingdoc]

As a former Brigade level commander, DADT worked because it was a regulation requiring one’s sexual orientation not to be brought to the workplace. Simple. Same for homosexual and non homosexual soldiers.
It merely banned “openly homosexual conduct”.
What is being conveniently ignored in this discussion is that the military also bans openly “heterosexual conduct” as well; in that, the military is not the place to be “acting out” one’s sexual orientation regardless of orientation. You could not for instance strut around like a stud talking about banging women. Cant do it. We have very strict policies and enforcement of sexual misconduct, heterosexual, homosexual or ANY kind. There is constant and serious education and enforcement of sexual behavior as it relates to professionalism. Sexual behavior of ANY orientation.

NOW, the problem for a commander, is what will be “allowed” as “acceptable behavior” and what wont be?

I can pretty much guarantee that what is to follow is an INSANE amount of over-protective educational sensitivity programs that are completely going to interfere with ....um, mission based training.
Yes, instead of mission training, the military and the commanders are probably now going to have to sepnd about 30% of its time and resources trying to figure out the line between “acceptable” homosexual behavior, and “unacceptable” homosexual behavior.

You and I and every damn lawyer in this country knows that every time a commander decides that a soldier’s behavior has crossed the line of military professionalism, they will pull out the homosexual discrimination card. It will be an instant rise to some degree of media exposure and fame for the soldier involved.
This is going to happen thousands of times and will consume incredible amounts of our commanders’ time, our military’s time and resources.
Case after case after case is going to be paraded by the mainstream media through the skewed view of their sexual popularism. No average civilian is going to be educated about the difference between merely ‘being homosexual’ and displaying “unprofessional behavior”, homosexual or otherwise, and no doubt the media will forcibly blur this distinction as much as humanly possible.

As a result, I foresee many cases of unprofessional sexual behavior from homosexual soldiers will be undoubtedly consciously ignored or passed over just to stay the hell out of trouble and keep the media off of any unit.
This in turn will necessarily create a troubling negative double standard to which the non homosexual soldiers will rightfully be recognizing. This is going to fractionate chains of command, and start to build distrust and resentment within units. What is sold as fairness will devolve into special dispensation of unacceptable behavior. A condition that simply cannot exist within the military if one expects continued exceptionalism made possible by unit cohesion.

Once again, this utterly contemptible group of politicians have screwed with something of which they know nothing about and have set in motion nothing but a path towards chaos and dysfunction. They do so in the name of fairness, yet the unintended consequences of putting politics before real time military functionality sets our nation back several paces.

At least the democrats I understand and expected, but those ‘republicans’ should be dressed down by every single member of their constituency from now till eternity.

[Taxman]

Taxman Bravo Zulu! Very well said, indeed!

The military is in the throes of a PC transformation right now — it began in the early 1970s when the role of women in the military was expanded.

I know about it, because I was there, and it was ugly!

The book on that horrible piece of social engineering has not yet been finished; suddenly, BOHICA! DADT, which has worked reasonably well, is repealed!

Of course, allowing practicing homosexuals to serve in the military will shove the female outrage back to Section D, below the fold. Out of sight and out of mind, the feminist PC crowd will continue to do great harm to our military (cf. Holly Ann Graff, Captain, USN) while the homosexual “issues” are dealt with.

I fear for my country.

[schwingdoc]

An interesting take. One I had not considered.
Certain heterosexual women soldiers and homosexual soldiers now will scramble for discrimation recognition supremacy.

F’n great. We might as well have the ACLU replace JAG.
</pukes in my mouth/>

[101voodoo]

For gays this will fit perfectly under the heading, “Be careful what you wish for because you may get it”

[101voodoo]

"Well, whatever those ways were, they will get you court-martialed"

Getting drunk will get you court martial. It is difficult for a soldier who is visited in the dead of night in his barrack to identify those who came to "counsel" him.

Gays will quickly learn the paucity of their numbers will make it necessary for them to keep to themselves as they did before. They have gained little or nothing with this new law and in fact have actually served to draw attention to themselves within a group of people who are decidedly anti what they are.

As I said before, it's a great example of, "be careful what you wish for because you may get it"

[101voodoo]

And so it shall be again.

people don’t seem to get that it is not just enlisted men who are against this. It is also the very back bone of the military, the NCO’s all the way up to the E-8’s @ E-9’s who are the ones who REALLY run the show. They are far to busy to pay much attention to a recruit who complains he was cuffed around because he was gay. For every complaint a gay will make about being persecuted there will be 10 soldiers ready to testify the gay soldier “came on to them and wouldn’t take no for an answer”

And once the gay soldier is identified the word will spread quickly and me sense is he will be one unhappy dude.

[onona]

And when you think about it, I gotta believe that considerable “weeding” will occur way upstream, starting at the recruiters office, and then in basic.

[aloppoct]

“And when you think about it, I gotta believe that considerable “weeding” will occur way upstream, starting at the recruiters office, and then in basic”.

I suspect this will be especially true for the Marines !

[101voodoo]

This has the huge and likely potential to turn into the gays worst nightmare.

They now MUST identify themselves as gay before they are sworn in. To not do so would mean they deliberately falsified a legal document and they would be subject to court martial and discharge under less then honorable conditions.

They can no longer use being gay as a free pass out of the military. Once they are in they are stuck, no matter the grief they will take (and trust me they will get grief. You can bet within 60 minutes of arriving on base the entire barracks he is assigned will be aware he is gay. Despite the recommendations that heteros be FORCED to shower with known gays, it won’t happen. The gay will simply be told to take his shower at 3:00AM and to keep his ass OUT of the latrine except to take a quick leak and such. Even then he’d better not even LOOK in the direction of the shower.