Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is history and gays and lesbians can serve in the military — not a great choice, but one that confers on them the full rights of citizenship. Well, all but one right — it’s time to move forward and legalize same-sex marriage.
The Senate is now on the precipice of history. By a 63-33 vote, the Senate has ended debate on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, sending it to a Senate vote and the likely passage of a repeal.
When that happens, and when it is signed by President Obama into law, lesbians and gays will no longer be forced to serve their country from the closet. They will have full citizenship rights.
That’s really what this has been about.
That’s essentially the way the Senate is treating a major civil rights issue — full citizenship for gay Americans.
There now appears to be enough support in the U.S. Senate to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Clinton-era compromise on gays serving in the military that forced gays and lesbians to lie under oath or risk being drummed out of the service. The law, which was viewed as a necessary middle ground at the time by some was just another legal impediment to full citizenship for the LGBT community because it meant that gays and lesbians were restricted from serving unless they kept their true identities hidden. Openly gay men and women were not allowed to serve with an institution that has traditionally been one of the definitions of citizenship.
So, now that the House has passed its repeal, it is up to the Senate, which will try to fit it in. How magnanimous.
Gay rights’ advocates can chalk up another victory. From The New York Times:
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge issued a worldwide injunction Tuesday stopping enforcement of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, ending the military’s 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ landmark ruling was widely cheered by gay rights organizations that credited her with getting accomplished what President Obama and Washington politics could not.
“This order from Judge Phillips is another historic and courageous step in the right direction, a step that Congress has been noticeably slow in taking,” said Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United and the sole named veteran plaintiff in the case along with the Log Cabin Republicans.
The judge said that
the law unconstitutional after a two-week nonjury trial in federal court in Riverside. She said the Log Cabin Republicans “established at trial that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act irreparably injures servicemembers by infringing their fundamental rights.”
She said the policy violates due process rights, freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances guaranteed by the First Amendment.
“Furthermore, there is no adequate remedy at law to prevent the continued violation of servicemembers’ rights or to compensate them for violation of their rights,” Phillips said.
The issue for me is not the impact on the military, which is the way that some supporters of overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell frame it. For me, the issue is citizenship: Gays and lesbians are either full partners in the American project — and can serve openly in defense of their country, get married and do all the other things that other Americans can do — or they can’t. And if they can’t, as people like New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino and other Tea Party candidates seem to believe, then the United States is not the nation we pretend it to be.
This, like the issue of same-sex marriage, is about citizenship — or it should be. Gays are being denied the right to be full partners in the nation’s civic life because they have to lie if they want to serve in the military. So much for the Declaration of Independence.
Hank Kalet 