What a sad, truly sad statement about our homophobic way of thinking!

Top Defense Officials Seek to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: February 2, 2010
WASHINGTON — The nation’s top two Defense officials called on Tuesday for an end to the 16-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, a major step toward allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the United States military for the first time in its history.
“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”
But both Admiral Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told the committee they needed more time to review how to carry out the change in policy, which requires an act of Congress, and predicted some disruption to the armed forces.
Admiral Mullen is the first sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs to support a repeal of the policy. In 1993, Gen. Colin L. Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, opposed allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly but supported “don’t ask, don’t tell” as the compromise passed by Congress. Under the policy, gay men and lesbians may serve as long as they keep their sexual orientation secret.
To lead a review of the policy, Mr. Gates appointed a civilian and a military officer: Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s top legal counsel, and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of the United States Army in Europe. Pentagon officials said the review could take up to a year.
In the interim, Mr. Gates announced that the military was moving toward enforcing the existing policy “in a fairer manner” — a reference to the possibility that the Pentagon would no longer take action to discharge service members whose sexual orientation is revealed by third parties or jilted partners, one of the most onerous aspects of the law. Mr. Gates said he had asked the Pentagon to make a recommendation on the matter within 45 days, but “we believe that we have a degree of latitude within the existing law to change our internal procedures in a manner that is more appropriate and fair to our men and women in uniform.”
As the hearing opened, the committee’s chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, welcomed the abolition of the policy, saying it had never made sense to him. Its ranking Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said that he was “deeply disappointed” and that the original rationale, endorsed by Congress in 1993, was as sound as ever.
On one thing, they agreed: many gay men and lesbians are serving honorably and effectively in the military today, despite a policy that has driven thousands of others out of the services. But Mr. Levin said the military should act in this matter as it has in others, as a force against discrimination. And Mr. McCain said the military culture was so different from civilian life that the rules for its members, too, must differ.
Mr. Levin cited an overwhelming view on the part of the public, as seen in polls, that the law should change. Mr. McCain said that a thousand retired admirals and generals had signed a petition against change, and that their views reflected the honest beliefs of military leaders as a whole, whatever Admiral Mullen’s personal view.
Mr. Gates said that the review would examine changes that might have to be made to Pentagon policies on benefits, base housing, fraternization and misconduct and that it would also study the potential effect on unit cohesion, recruiting and retention.
For further information, Mr. Gates said he would ask the Rand Corporation to update a 1993 study on the effect of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly. That study concluded that gay service members could serve openly if the policy was given strong support from the military’s senior leaders.
Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen were responding to President Obama’s campaign pledge to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which the president, after a year of saying of little about it, reaffirmed in his State of the Union address last week.
“The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it,” Mr. Gates told the committee. “We have received our orders from the commander in chief and we are moving out accordingly. However, we also can only take this process so far as the ultimate decision rests with you, the Congress.”
Gay rights groups had grown increasingly angry over the past year that Mr. Obama delayed acting on the policy for his first 12 months in office. But Pentagon officials were reluctant to move forward when they were at crucial points in two wars, and Mr. Obama himself did not want another polarizing debate to distract from his 2009 health care fight.
Admiral Mullen told the committee that although he believed “the great young men and women of our military can and would accommodate such a change,” he did not know for sure. “Nor do I know for a fact how we would best make such a major policy change in a time of two wars,” Admiral Mullen said.
Republicans have already signaled that they are concerned about timing and not eager to take up the issue. “In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC.
Some advocates of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly have pointed to an article last fall in Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal, that found that the several countries that have lifted bans on such open service had seen few harmful effects.
The article, by Col. Om Prakash of the Air Force, cited evidence that in countries where such bans had been lifted, including Australia, Britain and Canada, there had been no “mass exodus” of heterosexual service members and no impact on military performance. Colonel Prakash’s article had been reviewed in advance by Admiral Mullen’s office.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, asked the admiral on Tuesday if he was aware of whether the policies of many NATO allies in Afghanistan, allowing open service, had had any deleterious effect.
The admiral said that he had spoken to many of the NATO partners and that they had reported seeing “no impact” on military performance.
Polls now show that a majority of Americans support openly gay service — a majority did not in 1993 — but there have been no recent broad surveys of the 1.4 million active-duty personnel.
A 2008 census by The Military Times of predominantly Republican and largely older subscribers found that 58 percent were opposed to efforts to repeal the policy; in 2006, a poll by Zogby International of 545 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that three-quarters were comfortable around gay service members.
<story source>
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/us/politics/03military.html?8au&emc=au
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They want to serve their country, they have served their country, they are currently serving their country and yet we seem to think that we need to know just how they handle their sexual side of their 'PRIVATE LIFE'...good grief

Really, then why were the ones that either came out and announced their sexual orientation/or were fingered by others:

Oh, yes the ruling in 1993 sounded simplistic enough...but it hid the reality of what was going on and how the gays/lesbians were be run out of their respective military service!

Maybe we could find a nicer word than "fingered' when taking about gays / lesbians!

So if they remain in the 'CLOSET' that's OK, but if what they do on their off hours/R&R time was discovered then they were told to leave...WOW, that seems wonderfully narrow minded.

Did you know that Sen. John McCain flipped/flopped on this issue too...2006 "if any commander in chief our our armed forces said that we should stop this practice then I would agree"...flash forward to today's congressional discussion and now he {John McCain} is all against changing it...good grief he needs to retire from office!

I am all for gays in the military. We all know how militant they are and since they do not believe in God, they have no problem killing the enemy quickly and ruthlessly. And, most of them are in great physical condition too.

Plus with our PC hampered Pentagon, who there is going to court martial a gay soldier who killed too many of the enemy?

One concern - how will gays handle fighting Islam when Islam condones homosexual behavior between men and boys? - See Man Love Thursdays - we could be creating an enemy within. But hey consequences are for losers.

Warning...this is disturbing...
http://www.bouhammer.com/2010/01/and-you-thought-i-was-lying-about-man-love-thursdays/

Amazing how you make the 'gay' issue something that just suddenly occurred over night...as if we haven't historically had any gay service members fighting in any of our other historical wars...but who knows, they hide their gayness so well while defending the great country of ours...LMAO

Hold your bible in one hand and our consitution in the other and ask all of those 'GAY/Lesbian service people to fight for your freedoms just as long as they stay in the closet

Fair enough...I sure wish he would gracefully retire...NOW!

Why, do we need to find a way to accommodate this 'behaviour'...do we have a litmus test for all our armed forces for their sexual persuasions: S & M, child porn, orgies, etc., etc., etc., What goes on behind ones closed doors, in the privacy of their bedroom shouldn't be a gage of whether or not they are fit to fight for our country...never has been before and being gay/lesbian just didn't occur in this century!

Powell backs Mullen, Gates on DADT

Posted: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 10:45 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Andrea Mitchell

From NBC's Andrea Mitchell
Colin Powell has just issued a statement supporting Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen's and Defense Secretary Gates' effort to review -- and likely repeal -- the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy toward gays in the military.
Of course, it was Powell -- as Joint Chiefs chairman -- who persuaded the Clinton White House to adopt the DADT policy 17 years ago, because of Powell's opposition to gays in the military.
Powell's statement:

In the almost seventeen years since the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed. The principal issue has always been the effectiveness of the Armed Forces and order and discipline in the ranks. I strongly believe that this is a judgment to be made by the current military leadership and the Commander in Chief. It is also a judgment Congress must make. For the past two years, I have expressed the view that it was time for the law to be reviewed by Congress. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will be closely following future hearings, the views of the Service Chiefs and the implementation work being done by the Department of Defense.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/02/03/2193041.aspx

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John McCain flip/flopped back against and now Colin Powell comes out for the repeal of DADT...good grief, if we would all just STOP PLAYING MORALITY MONITORS and mind our own business...my what a wonderful world this could be {now strike up the Disney music and dance around the talking trees}...

"Homophobic": A deceptive term invented by gays and their advocates, in an attempt to pretend that a natural dislike of homosexual relations is somehow a "fear" in "misguided" people.

If libs think that what goes on in the home is none of anyone's business, why do they have such a problem with polygamy?

Unless of course, libs think that something in polygamists makes them unfit for military service.

And therein lies the problem, it requires them to hide something that should not need to be hidden. Heterosexuals are not required to hide their orientation--in fact I was just reading an article that said 3/4 of the women serving in the military have been raped at one time or another. I'm guessing that it wasn't gay men doing it. Lesbians either. How about a little of that good ol' American equality?

What a mish-mash of stuff! Homosexual sex is rampant in any place where heterosexual activity is denied to men. Prisons are very much like Islamic countries in their dearth of "normal" heterosexual outlets. You are confusing two separate issues. Most of the "homosexual" men in Islamic countries would be having heterosex if it was available just as men in prison would be. The percentage of real homosexually oriented people is pretty much the same in all the cultures for which we have research on it. Doubting the allegiance of our gay soldiers is just as stupid as doubting the allegiance of our Japanese soldiers in WWII.

And your dig about gays not believing in God is pretty sleazy. Even King David and his homosexual relationship with Jonathon was not condemned in the Bible. It's simple bigotry to condemn others because they don't believe what you believe when in point of fact you have no proof that your interpretation of "God's Will" is any more accurate than anyone else's.

An interesting twist on a definition, Corn. Of course you misused the word "natural" and "advocates" too. Many people have a "natural" dislike for eaters of the dead too, but don't pass laws against them or beat them up on the street. Fear of homosexuality is very common in American men, but much less so in European men. I saw what was done to the gay guys I knew when I was in school, even the straight guys who were just called gay often got the living sh1t beaten out of them. Dislike? I don't think so, it's too hysterical for just dislike, it's fear. And the very worst people are the ones who think they might have some gay or bisexual leanings, they have to be especially brutal so that no one suspects them.

Conservatives support polygamy? Always, Acorn, dogtowner, is that true? I don't recall any of the conservative Congressmen or Senators supporting it, do you? In fact, except for the child molestors in some religious cults, I don't recall ANYONE advocating it.

People call me a liberal but I have stated numerous times that plural marriage has worked well in human cultures, it's even in the Bible. I don't have any problem with it as long as it's confined to consenting adults.