Posted on 01/14/2009 2:34:57 PM PST by Zakeet
President Obama will end the 15-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy that has prevented homosexual and bisexual men and women from serving openly within the U.S. military, a spokesman for the president-elect said.
Obama said during the campaign that he opposed the policy, but since his election in November has made statements that have been interpreted as backpedaling. On Friday, however, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, responding on the transition team's Web site to a Michigan resident who asked if the new administration planned to get rid of the policy, said:
"You don't hear politicians give a one-word answer much. But it's 'Yes'."
The little-noticed response, made in a video posted on change.gov, made barely a ripple outside blogs focused on the gay community, but that's not surprising, said those who have been pushing to overturn the ban. Not only was Obama's position expected, they said, but support for reviewing or repealing the policy has grown markedly in recent years, including from some unexpected quarters.
The end of "don't ask, don't tell" may not happen immediately, several critics of the policy said. Although they appreciate clarity from Obama on the issue, they anticipate that the demands of the economy and two wars are likely to trump a speedy policy reversal.
"The question isn't if we do it and the question isn't when we do it, it's how we do it," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, whose 2006 bill to repeal the ban earned broad support among Democrats in Congress but did not move forward in the face of a near-certain veto by President Bush.
"I'm going to reintroduce the bill in the next few weeks," Tauscher said. "We've got the American people behind us."
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
You really must be a libbie. The whole victimhood, “I’m going to tell Mommy” thing fits perfectly.
I'm not familiar with all of them, but we didn't have a lot of problems with the ones I've visited in Oregon. Part of the reason that there were arrests is that the legitimate lawful users of those areas were vigilant in making sure law enforcement officers were called in to deal with unsavory types.
I would imagine that unwanted actions on the part of those who deem the locker room or the latrine to be pick up spots will be dealt with swiftly and surely.
"You typical white grandma types haven't trusted nothin' since Rock Hudson died."
From my childhood recollections, “tuchas” is Yiddish for butt.
I’m not Jewish, but grew up in a Holocaust survivor neighborhood. If I am wrong about this translation, I hope that better informed Freepers will correct me.
How coincidental you should mention this: Hitler’s earliest SS members, the men who formed the majority of his brown shirts, were homosexual.
Later, Hitler had them all killed. It’s the fascist (Chicago?) way.
So long as his actions are legal and Constitutional, then yeah, we're stuck with them. Even more importantly, the military is bound by his decisions as CiC, so long as those decisions are legal and Constitutional.
The difference is, race isn’t sexual orientation no matter how much the homo community would like to make it. Fact is, homosexuality is a sexual perversion, abnormal.
The military and society finally got over the race issue (and now it’s being used as victim status, that can’t be denied). Race isn’t a choice. Sexual perversion is. There’s a difference.
The penalty for your “thought crimes” will be a complete re-programming, since you are obviously incorrigible.
The Obamanators are coming for you, any day now..... (and they’re coming after all of us).
Thanks. Never heard that term before.
Must be a gay thing.
We're discussing it because we lost this last election, and we lost it bad. So, yeah, it looks like Obama is going to overturn the ban on open gays in th military as an ideological award for his base on the left. Why wouldn't he? The only people he is going to piss off are people who'd never vote for him anyway.
There's a lesson in that, I guess- the in-fighting we saw during the election ensured that a less-than-perfect GOP candidate lost to a guy who may very well remake America to an extent we haven't seen since the Great Society.
99.9% of the “homosexuals” discharged from the military are straight and simply claiming homosexuality as a way to get out early. The other .1% are homosexuals coming out just to get out of the military.
So's religion. Our society has pretty much gotten over that one, too.
We have managed to have a gender-integrated military, we will figure out how to get along in this area, too. Not every gay or lesbian person is the flaming queer whose loves to show off in the gay pride day parade.
Unfortunately I do believe there would be flamboyant gays. Prior to Clinton, I had a law class professor (CPT in the Army) who told a story of defending a Colonel. He had been spotted wearing a dress at a gay bar...this was a court martial offense. This Colonel knew what he was risking, but he still couldn’t resist putting on a dress. Take away the risk, and yes, we will have guys being very ‘openly’ gay.
correction: the SA and the SS were different organizations — both certainly ruthless and depraved, but it was Rohm and the SA leadership of “brown shirts” who were most notoriously homosexual, and they are the ones that Hitler purged in the “night of the long knives”......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm
Death
Although determined to curb the power of the SA, Hitler put off doing away with his long-time comrade to the very end. Himmler, Heydrich, and Göring used Röhm’s published anti-Hitler rhetoric to support a claim that the SA was plotting to overthrow Hitler. By late June, this story had been officially recognised and Himmler was giving protective orders to the SS, while Sepp Dietrich went around showing army officers a purported SA execution list. Reports of the SA threat were passed to Hitler; it is possible that Himmler and his colleagues actually deceived Hitler into thinking the plot was real.
Meanwhile, Röhm and several of his cronies went away on holiday at a resort in Bad Wiessee. On June 28, Hitler phoned Röhm and asked him to gather all the SA leaders at Bad Wiessee on June 30 for a conference. Röhm agreed, apparently unsuspicious.
The day and night of June 30 marked the Night of the Long Knives, when the entire leadership of the SA was purged, along with many other political adversaries of the Nazis. At dawn that morning, Hitler flew to Munich and then drove to Bad Wiessee, where he personally arrested Röhm and the other SA leaders. All were imprisoned at Stadelheim Prison in Munich.
Hitler was uneasy authorising Röhm’s execution and gave Röhm an opportunity to commit suicide. On July 2, he was visited by SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke (then Kommandant of Dachau) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Lippert, who lay a pistol on the table, told Röhm he had ten minutes to use it, and left. Röhm refused, saying “If Adolf wants to shoot me, he can do it himself”.[citation needed] When Eicke and Lippert returned, he stood in the middle of the cell with his shirt opened, theatrically baring his chest as they shot him. Röhm was buried in the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery) in Munich.
The purge of the SA was legalised the next day with a one-paragraph decree: the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence. At this time no public reference was made to the alleged SA rebellion; instead there were generalised references to misconduct, perversion, and some sort of plot. John Toland noted that Hitler had long been privately aware that Röhm and his SA associates were homosexuals, but said nothing, though he of course disapproved. Nazi propaganda now made use of their sexual orientation as justification of the executions.
A few days later, the claim of an incipient SA rebellion was publicised and became the official reason for the entire wave of arrests and executions. Indeed the affair was labeled the “Röhm-putsch” by German historians, though after World War II it has usually been modified as the “alleged Röhm-putsch”. In a speech on July 13, Hitler alluded to Röhm’s homosexuality and explained the purge as chiefly defence against treason. [3]
Heh. They can come all they want. As my Mom used to say, they can never change our thoughts. They can shove this nonsense down our throats all they want but they will never change our thoughts/beliefs.
The homo lobby wants to change not only our institutions but how we think, what we believe. It’s one of the main reasons they’re so prevalent in our schools. First, it was high school but once they realized teens don’t fall for this crap, they started on the middle schools. That hasn’t worked well either so they’re pushing in the elementary schools now. It won’t work there either.
Gosh I want a beer! ;)
I’m sorry, have you not read any news in the past 10 years? The Catholic priesthood became a haven for gay pedophiles.
The first of many, I fear.
Bingo.
I think it could pass. Tack it on to the ‘stimulus package’ and dems and Rinos have cover. Obama will ‘consult’ with his hand picked chairman of the joint chiefs and determine that he has no objection (I think he’s a Navy guy, just kidding). Everything will be hunky dory, the BBC will praise us, and it will be O’s first major accomplishment. Remember the good old Clinton days when he would pass something dumb through congress about once a week in his first term...to satisfy one special interest group after another, in a 4 year re-election campaign? Get ready for a repeat.
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