As a participant recounted one of the sessions, Mr. Obama told Defense SecretaryRobert M. Gates and Adm.Mike Mullen,
the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, that the law was “just
wrong.” Mr. Obama told them, the participant said, that he had delayed
acting on repeal because the military was stretched in two wars and he
did not want another polarizing debate in 2009 to distract from his
health care fight.But in 2010, he told them, this would be a priority. He got no objections.
On
Tuesday, in the first Congressional hearing on the issue in 17 years,
Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen will unveil the Pentagon’s initial plans
for carrying out a repeal, which requires an act of Congress. Gay
rights leaders say they expect Mr. Gates to announce in the interim
that the Defense Department will not 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. Pentagon
officials had no comment.
But lest we think this is going to be an easy debate, we have John Boehner declaring that we still need to fight the gay Islamofascists within, or something:
“In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat,” RepresentativeJohn A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Sunday on “Meet the Press” onNBC, “why would we want to get into this debate?”
Because it’s more productive than spending all our time worrying about who’s jerking it to the Jonas Brothers? Honestly. The less time spent drumming people who want to serve their country out of the services, the more time we can spend actually fighting those wars and whatever this new giant security threat is.
What is the giant security threat, by the way? I’ve been offline most of the weekend.
A.
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What is the giant security threat, by the way? I’ve been offline most of the weekend.
I heard the Ellen Jamesians were preparing to mount a Spring offensive, but I could have misread the communique.
Yeah, during a time of war, it would be terrible to stop discharging trained, skilled soldiers because of who they find attractive. I mean, I’m sure we can get by without those soldiers just fine. /sarcasm
The “giant security threat” is the Long War, which neocons dreamed up to replace the Cold War, because they all grew up in a constant state of artificially-induced perpetual low-grade terror and simply don’t know how to cope with life without having some kind of existential threat in the picture. It will never, ever go away, at least not until everyone who bought into it are all dead.
If you consider that the current crop of neocons’ parents were of the generation that lived through two World Wars and a Great Depression, and probably spent most of their formative years either being terrorised by war or poverty, you start to understand better why the culture those people created starting in the late 1940s was entirely predicated on fostering social anxiety. Once there was peace and prosperity, these people didn’t know how tostand down, so they spent the next couple of decades freaking out about everything from the definition of social roles, to conformity, to personal hygiene. (Don’t believe me? Watch a couple hours’ worth of tv commercials from the 1950s, and see how many of them are intended to make people insecure about themselves. Areyour whites white enough? Your husband will hate you if they aren’t, and your neighbours will talk about what a bad woman you are! Doyou have bad breath? Your wife will stop sleeping with you if you do, and your coworkers will laugh at you! Hey, kids! Doyou have theright toys? Your friends will hate you if you don’t, and they might go play with that other kid instead!)
And when they realised that people simply weren’t scared enough by ring around the collar and sweaty armpits, the right wing of the time decided that the Soviet Union (then less than a decade out from losing ~15% of their population in WWII) had to be the new terrifying thing…
Please don’t crush my rare optimism:
But lest we think this is going to be an easy debate
But… isn’t it easier than we think? It polls pretty well even though Democrats really haven’t been trying at all; the optics of it are a cakewalk (GAY PANIC vs. staffing our military with the best possible candidates, who actually want to be patriots); and it seems like the main roadblock is that weird orange fucker Boehner. I’m happy for that son of a bitch to get on the TV and make insta-self-refuting arguments. BRING IT.