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Monday, May 11, 2009
Bad Advice for Barack Obama
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen are scheduled to appear this week before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. In anticipation, the Gays-in-the-Military PR hot air machine has fired up again.
The campaign piped down a little bit when President Obama took the oath of office, with most activities happening in private. There were numerous meetings at the White House with the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT groups, and several activists have been appointed to key positions.
But now the activists are growing increasingly impatient because Obama has not appointed a gay cabinet member or the equivalent, and because he has not pressured Congress to repeal the 1993 law regarding homosexuals in the military (Section 654, Title 10, usually mislabeled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or DADT). Barney Frank, the highest-profile openly-gay Member of Congress, told Roll Call last Thursday that Democrats don't have the votes for repeal this year. Now the activists are demanding that Obama issue an Executive Order essentially nullifying the 1993 law by high-handed fiat.
That would be the effect if he were to order Pentagon officials to stop enforcement of the law, across the board. So much for Obama's oath of office, which obligates him and the executive branch to enforce duly-enacted laws. (DADT is not a law-it is the convoluted enforcement policy that President Bill Clinton imposed on the military, even though it differs from the law that Congress actually passed. Congress allowed Clinton to drop "the question" from military induction forms asking potential new servicemembers whether or not they were homosexual, but that question can be reinstated at any time—no additional legislation required.)
The stepped-up campaign began last week when the New York Times (print headquarters of the Gays-in-the-Military-Campaign) turned up the heat on the Obama Administration to do something, anything, to advance the gay cause:
As Gay Issues Arise, Obama is Pressed to Engage
The broadcast Gays-in-the-Military-Campaign is headquartered at MSNBC. On May 6, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow interviewed Dan Choi, aWest Point grad and former Army lieutenant who ended his military career when he announced that he was homosexual earlier this year.
Maddow would never ask an obvious question that CMR President Elaine Donnelly asked the Department of Defense and Army Inspectors General (IG) to investigate several years ago when twelve language trainees were discharged from the Defense Language Institute (DLI) near Monterey, California: Why did the DLI, or in this case West Point, admit trainees or cadets who were not eligible to serve in the military?
Mr. Choi's willingness to serve our country is admirable, but assuming that he knew that he was gay when he entered West Point, either he was misled by West Point officials or he chose to disregard the 1993 law. The Inspectors General did not answer Donnelly's questions about DLI, but members of Congress can and should ask similar questions at any time. Everyone can serve our country in some way, but not everyone is eligible for military service.
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