Gay Issues Seem Like A Boring Sideshow To Me

Great Debates
1

I was watching MSNBC covering prospects for repeal of DADT, and I realized something … I don’t CARE about DADT. I don’t much care about DOMA either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m FOR gays being able to openly serve in the military and to be allowed to marry one another, but neither activity strikes me as all that interesting. It’s kind of on par with a campaign for gays to be allowed to pay parking tickets and fill out income tax forms. Huzzah.

I feel we have much more pressing problems to deal with, mainly getting America working again, solving the long-term issues that are making good jobs vanish to be replaced by crap jobs, the massive shift of wealth in this country to the top two or three percent of Amercans, and the attempts of the right wing to manipulate and control the political process, all of which in my humble opinion are interrelated.

I also think of the way the Republicans did such a great job of energizing their base with the terror that gays might be allowed to marry, and wonder if the left is similarly being snookered into spending huge amounts of political capital on issues that affect only 2 to 10 percent of Americans.

Basically, I think there should be a LOT more attention paid to economic issues than gay issues. Fixing the inequities for gays will win us the vote of SOME gay people … 2 to 10 percent … and is the right thing to do. But fixing the economy will win us the support of all those moderates out there. It’s a LOT more important politically. No amount of DADT repealing will get jobs for unemployed or underemployed Americans.

2

Right, because if it’s not a vote winner, we don’t give a fuck. No, wait… that’s stupid.

3

I’m not sure what there is to say about it other than the obvious: if you were gay and wanted to get married or serve in the military, you would probably care more than you do. None of those things apply to me either, but as far as I’m concerned, these are just commonsense issues that should not be so difficult to deal with. It’s a basic civil rights matter. And really, nobody has to choose between Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and fixing the economy. Congress is always dealing with many issues at once. You’re welcome to your own priorities, obviously.

4

I don’t see any evidence that lawmakers are spending a lot of time on gay issues as compared to economic issues. The gay stuff makes good press, so you hear about it more. That’s my take.

5

Well, the Dems passed the Stimulus, Affordable Care Act, Financial Reform, the Tax Deal, increased food safety measures, a dozen or so smaller measures and made failed efforts to pass Cap and Trade and two types of immigration reform before the latest DADT repeal vote. So it appears they agree with you. It wasn’t exactly at the tippy-top of anyones priority list.

But in general I think those priorities are correct, though as others have said, Congress has demonstratably been able to repeal DADT and do a bunch of other stuff.

6

Neither gay marriage nor gays in the military directly affect me either, but I care because they are moral issues – particularly the former. The same dark, bigoted, evil impuse that 50 years ago would have made my marriage illegal is behind the desire to make same-sex marriage illegal, and it is incumbent on men of good will to oppose evil where we can.

7

I’m sorry that you find a human rights issue that affects real people everyday to be boring because it doesn’t bring large enough amounts of people to the polls.

8

And what makes you think that there ever was or ever will be a time when there aren’t other problems to deal with? If they decided to wait into “more important” things are taken care of, then they’d end up waiting forever. Should blacks have just sucked it up and put up with segregation indefinitely because there were “more important” problems to deal with like the Cold War?

9

Not a vote winner? It fits right into the “Republicans evil/Democrats good and everyone in the world knows it so you should vote for us” playbook that made Obama the obvious choice of all right thinking humans in 2008.

10

Actually it was Sarah Palin that made Obama the choice of all right thinking humans.

11

I agree. That said, if Evil Captor is saying it’s been used as a wedge issue, he’s right. But that’s the nature of the issue: gay rights have no direct effect on most people, but a great many people have decided it was their business over the years.

Your sarcasm aside, I’m not sure it’s a vote winner. Gays generally support the Democrats anyway, and whatever credit they get for ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be mitigated by the fact that a lot of their supporters expected this policy to be one of Obama’s priorities, not something that got done at the end of year two. I suppose that complaint will fade over time. Maybe Congress was ahead of the public when DADT was passed, but by now, most voters oppose the policy. The country had caught up and gone past Congress on this one. It’s seen as a no-brainer by a lot of people at this point, so I don’t think too many votes are going to change as a result. Certainly I don’t think a lot of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will start voting Democrat because of this. Do you?

12

In 1992 if a candidate had supported allowing gays in the military, every member of my immediate family (six “kids” between 18 and 26 and my parents) might have found that enough reason to vote against them. Now the litmus test is pretty much the other way around. All of us are in favor of repealing DADT, and all six “kids” are in favor of gay marriage. If my parents live another ten years, I bet they will swing over on that issue as well. Mom is already very much in favor of allowing gay couples to adopt, and Dad is wavering.

13

That’s to your credit and the credit of the public in general. When it started, DADT was a compromise that was arguably a step forward. (If it had lived up to its name, at least. I don’t think it did.) Now it isn’t because the public is much more supportive of gay rights, and that’s only going to increase.

The OP said this move doesn’t gain the Democrats a lot of votes because people who supported repealing DADT generally voted Democrat anyway. I think that’s true on its face. On the other hand it helps them stay in position to take advantage in the future when this becomes a bigger vote-loser for Republicans. None of which really has any bearing on priorities or the moral aspect of the issue.

14

I agree with Marley that DADT gets a bad rap. It’s a bad law now, but at the time it passed it was a remarkable victory for gay rights, in theory anyway. It’s a testament to how public opinion of homosexuality has changed that there is now so much support for getting rid of it because it does not allow gays to serve openly.

15

Are there more pressing needs than stuff like DADT? Sure. But, in all but the best of times, because of how small the population that it affects is, not just gays, but gays who want to serve in the military, there’s almost always going to be a more pressing issue. The thing is, big issues take lots of time to figure out, make compromises, get public opinion, blah blah. You can’t just write a bill that will fix the economy overnight. Big important problems take lots of time.

DADT is a completely different animal because, while it probably doesn’t do as much good overall as fixing the economy, it’s a trivial problem to address. It isn’t a complicated fix, it’s a simple question of whether it should have stayed in place or if it should be repealed. So, while it’s a much smaller problem, it’s also a much quicker fix. Theoretically, it should have been an investment similar because the resources to address it are small. It really should have been nothing more than tasking the branches to do their studies, give them a bit of time, to do so, and drafting up a short bill repealing it.

The problem is, gay rights are ridiculously complicated in this country and something that should have been that simple and taken MAYBE half a day of congress’s time ends up taking weeks and months because there’s so much politicizing, fear-mongering, finger-pointing, and other garbage that gets muddled in with what is really a very simple and straight forward issue.

So yes, it’s probably a bit boring because we’ve heard all this crap a thousand times before and it’s getting way more coverage than it warrants precisely because it’s being blown out of proportion and it probably doesn’t affect you or anyone you know, even if you or someone you know is gay, but it’s still the right thing to do, especially because it’s such an obvious solution.

So, don’t be upset that it was addressed, be upset at the media for making such a big deal out of it or the random assholes in congress who were opposing it for stupid reasons like the idea that the economy is more important. Hey, if you stopped complaining about how the economy was more important and just took care of it, you’d actually be working on the economy now instead of complaining about how the economy is more important and wasting time yapping about this issue.

16

This is the point I was trying to make rather clumsily.

17

My take is that it was a better policy in theory than in practice. I understood the idea to be that along with the non-asking and -telling, servicemembers and brass wouldn’t pry into people’s lives to find out if they were gay. I don’t think it worked out that way, and maybe that should have been expected.

That being said, even if it was an acceptable intermediate step, the language of the rules is galling.

18

Its pretty clearly not true actually. DADT appeal was pretty widely popular, something like 80% of voters supported it. In some polls even a majority of registered Republicans supported it. Presumably if those 80% “generally voted Democrat anyways” there would hardly be any elected Republican officials left in the country.

19

Bullshit. DADT was always a win for the bigots. It is no different than separate but equal.

20

Repealing DADT effects more than just gays and lesbians and bisexuals. The military now has access to a wider pool of talent than before. Admitedly that pool has only gotten 10% bigger at most, but don’t forget about recruitment at colleges. Recruiters should be able to get wider access (hopefully with less protest) than before. Harvard and Yale are already planning on letting ROTC back on campus now.