Tag: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Clinton Supports Same-Sex Marriage
Our nation’s permanent mission is to form a ‘more perfect union’ – deepening the meaning of freedom, broadening the reach of opportunity, strengthening the bonds of community. That mission has inspired and empowered us to extend rights to people previously denied them. Every time we have done that, it has strengthened our nation. Now we should do it again, in New York, with marriage equality.
— Former Pres. Bill Clinton, supporting same-sex marriage. Both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy were codified under Clinton.
Obama Signs Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
We can only hope paramedics are standing by John McCain.
Verbatim
The commandant of the United States Marine Corps says when your life hangs on the line, you don’t want anything distracting… I don’t want to permit that opportunity to happen and I’ll tell you why. You go up to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Marines are up there with no legs, none. You’ve got Marines at Walter Reed with no limbs.”
— Sen. John McCain, explaining his opposition to allowing gays to serve openly in the military by referencing Marines with no legs (none). How this figures in, or why allowing openly heterosexual men and women to serve is not also affected by Marines with no legs, was not clarified.
Verbatim
If John McCain gets any more hostile toward his Senate colleagues, they might consider having him go through the metal detector before he enters the Capitol.
— The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, summing up Sen. John McCain’s bizarre behavior during the debate over rescinding the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. Milbank added that, “McCain’s statement on the floor was roughly one part argument, four parts tantrum.”
John McCain on Repealing DADT: Gay People Aren’t Fit to “Live, Eat, Sleep, or Fight’ Alongside Straight Service Members
If you’re wondering what very poorly disguised homophobia sounds like, check out John McCain. And a little newsflash for the senator: no amount of “studying” and holding hearings will turn back time. The world has changed, Pops, and your opinion of gay people, which apparently includes the idea that they are inherently less able than straight people to control their sexual urges (maybe like the situation you’re more familiar with, being married to one woman but screwing another?) and force themselves on straight people who are not interested in them, is sheer biogotry. And one last thing: I wouldn’t want to live, eat, sleep, or fight alongside you either.
In Interview After Killing DADT Repeal, McCain Proves Again He’s Not Fit for National Leadership
After leading the effort to stop the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the Senate yesterday — a repeal he supported in 2006 — Sen. John McCain had a temper tantrum during an interview with reporters Kerry Eleveld from the Advocate and Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly, who dared confront him with facts about DADT that were counter to the false narrative he’d been promoting.
– McCain
“I don’t care what you say! And I don’t care what others say,” he barked, when reporters pointed out that, contrary to DADT policy, service personnel had been sought out for dismissal because they were gay. When the reporters continued to press him, he went into a juvenile rant, railing, “It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir, if you choose to. It is not the policy.”
Under DADT, the military is not supposed to investigate personnel who are merely suspected of being gay — that’s the “don’t ask” part. But it does happen — and John McCain knows it does.
In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSBNC last night, Major Mike Almy, who was dismissed after his personal emails were hacked by the military, called McCain on his B.S.:
Republican Senators Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Don’t Answer the Phone for Lady Ga Ga
Ga Ga: “I am here to be a voice for my generation, not the generation of the senators who are voting, but for the youth of this country, the generation that is affected by this law, and whose children will be affected. We are not asking you to agree with, or approve of the moral implications of homosexuality.”
There is so much wrong with these assumptions that it’s hard to know where to start (many Guard members are in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s, and why NOT ask the senators to stop declaring homosexuality is immoral?) but as the aunt of a 12-year-old, I know that Ga Ga is correct that she speaks for youth, and her heart is definitely in the right place on this one.
Maddow Returns Gibbs’ Friendly Fire, Devotes Show to Military Careers Destroyed by DADT
It’s the hubris, stupid.