Free Republic

Purpose: Promote and protect the sexual health of the Department of the Navy (DoN) population to support mission readiness and accomplishment, minimize avoidable health care costs and personnel losses, prevent morbidity and mortality, and support quality of life. Definition: Sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination

Speaking in a video for an ad campaign aimed at ending the bullying of gay teenagers, Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain of Arizona, broke with her husband and called for a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. In a new public service announcement for NOH8, a group devoted to promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Mrs. McCain faces the camera and says: “Our political and religious leaders tell L.G.B.T. youth that they have no future.”) “They can’t serve our country openly,” says Mrs. McCain, whose husband, a Republican and veteran...

Cindy McCain has delivered a double-barreled rebuke -- to the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy -- and to her husband, one of the policy's leading supporters. She chose as her forum a new anti-bullying public service video sponsored by a California gay and lesbian rights group. ...Her appearances, totaling less than 15 seconds in the two and a half minute film, are interspersed between those of other celebrities, who also decry policies and attitudes that condone anti-gay bullying.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is refusing to block enforcement of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military while a federal appeals court considers the issue. The court on Friday denied a request from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to step into the ongoing federal court review of "don't ask, don't tell." The Obama administration urged the high court not to get involved at this point.

(snip) Mr. McCain, who previously expressed support for repeal providing that it had the military leadership’s approval, should listen. His clout could be decisive. Failure to enact repeal would be a personal rebuff to troops now serving in two wars. It would also fly in the face of the public’s overwhelming support of repeal. (snip) Senator McCain has a chance to do right by the military and country he championed as a war hero. He should find a reasonable way to forgo a filibuster and end this grave injustice.

President Obama's first appointment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff is continuing, rather than settling, the divisive debate among the nation's top military officers on gays in the military. The disagreement comes as doubts grow over whether Democrats can muster enough votes in Congress' lame-duck session next week to repeal the Pentagon ban on open gays, known as "don't ask, don't tell." Pro-gay activists are sounding pessimistic, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not guaranteeing a vote will happen. Mr. Obama handpicked Gen. James Amos to be Marine Corps commandant, who replaced Gen. James T. Conway, considered the military's...

Now that America’s patriots have put Soros’ and the left’s agenda on life support, Brother O must now rely on the “lame-duck” session of the Democrat Congress (the interim congressional session before the Republicans take office in January) to castrate the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy and force open homosexuality in the U.S. military. The lame-duck session will allow the Democrats who were ousted from office in the November election to stick it to the electorate with impunity. And Brother O is adamant “that we need to change this policy.” “There’s going to be a review that comes...

The Obama administration reiterated its support Monday for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) worked to strip language repealing the ban from the annual defense authorization bill. "The White House opposes any effort to strip 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' from the National Defense Authorization Act," said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer. The written statement came as gay rights groups working to end the ban and liberal bloggers raised concerns that McCain would succeed in stripping repeal language from the massive defense policy bill. McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services...

Log Cabin Republicans petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the legal battle over "don't ask, don't tell" after federal appeals court allowed the ban to stay in place indefinitely. On Friday, attorneys for the Log Cabin Republicans filed an appeal in hopes of finally overthrowing the ban on openly homosexual troops serving in the military. The gay and lesbian group had expressed opposition to last week’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to indefinitely uphold the 1993 law. In a Nov. 1 statement, Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper said, “Log Cabin Republicans is disappointed that Don’t Ask...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is encouraging Congress to act before year's end to repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military. It's a position shared by his boss, the president. But his new Marine commandant thinks otherwise and the Senate has not yet taken action, setting up yet another hurdle for gay activists who see their window quickly closing. After Tuesday's elections that saw Republicans chip away at Democrats' majority in the Senate and wrest the House from their control, their hopes for ending the 17-year-old law have dimmed. "I would like to see the repeal of 'don't...

Reporting from San Diego — With U.S. troops — including 20,000 Marines — locked in a "tough fight" in Afghanistan, now is not the time to lift the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military, the new commandant of the Marine Corps said Saturday. Gen. James Amos told reporters in San Diego that he was concerned about a possible loss of unit cohesion and combat readiness if the ban is overturned. "There's risk involved," Amos said. "I'm trying to determine how to measure that risk. This is not a social thing. This is combat effectiveness."

MELBOURNE, Australia – U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military's ban on gays serving openly in the military. He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as "don't ask, don't tell." "I would like to see the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" but I'm not sure what the prospects for that are," Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia. Unless the lame-duck Congress acts, the...

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military's ban on gays serving openly in the military. He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as "don't ask, don't tell." "I would like to see the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" but I'm not sure what the prospects for that are," Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia. Unless the lame-duck Congress acts, the repeal effort is...

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The new commandant of the U.S. Marines Corps said Saturday that now is the wrong time to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibiting gays from openly serving in the military, as U.S. troops remain in the thick of war in Afghanistan. "There's risk involved; I'm trying to determine how to measure that risk," Gen. James Amos said. "This is not a social thing. This is combat effectiveness. That's what the country pays its Marines to do."

One of the top priorities of the coming lame duck session of Congress will be the formal repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," aka U.S. Code Title 10, Section 654. Obama won't have another chance to shove it through before 2012, and he wants the gay community on his side then. He will probably also want to repeal Article 125 - Sodomy in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Read at least the "Findings" part of Section 654 before you go any further. It contains a good summary of the logic that was used at the time that "Don't...

Unless Senator Harry Reid and President Barack Obama can pull of a miracle in the Senate, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in a legislative manner dies this session. Representative Howard McKeon, the Republican from California, will be taking over as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and he is signaling rather strongly that he plans on rewarding his supporters among the Christian Conservatives by obliterating the repeal of DADT. According to McKeon, “Republicans on both sides of the Capitol aisle are committed to passing a National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 that is not weighed...

When there is a lot going on in the news, during confusing hectic times like this, keep an eye out for the Obama Admin to sneak stuff by us. For example, watch out for DADT, they will pull something with DADT repeal while our attention is focused elsewhere...

A divided three-judge panel granted the Obama administration's request to uphold the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy until all legal methods are exhausted. Monday's 2-1 decision struck down an Oct. 12 ruling from a district court judge in Riverside, CA, which declared the law unconstitutional. Judge Virginia Phillips, who wrote the decision, ordered a worldwide ban on the law, which prevented its enforcement until Oct. 20, when the 9th Circuit Court granted an emergency request from the Obama administration for a stay on the injunction. The ruling was a setback for the suit's plaintiffs, Log Cabin Republicans, who had...

Under attorney general Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is dangerously politicized, radically leftist, racialist, lawless, and at times corrupt. The good news is that it's also often incompetent. This means the Holderites can bungle their leftist lawlessness so badly that even the most reticent of judges are obliged to smack them down. The abuses by the Holderites are legion. They range from DOJ's infamous abandonment of the already-won voter-intimidation case against several New Black Panthers to multi-faceted assaults on traditional standards of voting rights and obligations; from a growing list of lawsuits deliberately destructive of border security...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court in San Francisco has indefinitely extended its freeze on a judge's order halting enforcement of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Monday's decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means gay Americans who disclose their sexual orientations still can't enlist in the armed forces and can be discharged.