Yeah, that’s why I added the caveat “in theory.” The idea was to eliminate witchhunts and prevent people from getting drummed out of the service for discreet behavior, but the application varied wildly.
No, a win for the bigots in 1992 would have been status quo. Clinton took a lot of heat from the anti-gay lobby in '92 accompanied by dire predictions that the military would collapse in a pile of queer gangbangs and shower rapes. DADT was an important intermediate step. There is no way full acceptance of gays in the military would have been possible 18 years ago.
ETA: Also, it was nothing like “separate but equal.” In theory, no one was supposed to know or care if you were gay, unless you outed yourself. That’s still a far cry from fair treatment but it was a positive step.
Back in 92 DADT was perceived by Clinton as a compromise, but perceived by the gay community as a betrayal. I think Clinton got more flak for it from the gay community than he deserved. He didn’t know that the military would flout the rules and kick out MORE gay service member post 1992 than before.
The official policy was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue. The assholes in the military ignored the last part. So I can see that Clinton saw a good compromise, but in application it was worse than what was there before.
My point is that getting married and joining the military are kinda humdrum things to be doing. Sorry, they just are. Yah, if I was gay I might care more but I’m not and i don’t. Plus the argument seems really stupid and backward, and always had, to me. What the hell does a gay person getting married have to do with straight people getting married? So it’s kinda annoying to be inundated with debate about it.
Plus, I suspect the Pubbies who are concerned with economic issues are playing the left as well as the right with the gay issues. They scared the right wing bigidiots with “Pay no attention to the way you are being economically screwed … gays might get married if you don’t vote for us!” And now it’s “We will prevent gays from being married and serving in the military forever … don’t bother with the banks getting to continue to invest in high-risk financial schemes – pay attention to THIS!”
Of course, Congress can address both issues. But they can distract with the one issue while working on the issues that REALLY concern them out of sight, as it were.
I think more this could be more correctly stated as “If I wanted to get married or join the military I might care more but I don’t.” If you want to do something and are denied it’s not humdrum.
I didn’t want to threadshit in any of the other discussion lately, but, since we’re here:
While I agreed with the overall issue, my larger pacifism has really kept me from supporting allowing gays in the military. Marriage, freedom from harassement (which, as a managerial type I’ve made a big fucking deal to enforce while my fellow-managerial types just laughed at it), etc, etc, you bet. But war is bullshit and I’ll support somebody’s participation in it just like I’ll support their right to perform capital punishment or picket abortion clinics.
The US military does a lot more than just make war. To sum it up as just one big killing machine ignores the numerous humanitarian and disaster relief missions all of the services have performed in the past decade alone, not to mention the very critical task of deterring full-scale war in places like Korea or West Germany during the Cold War.
I honestly can’t agree. These are basic things - they aren’t simply useful or wanted things in and of themselves, they are things which transform society. Being able to get married, being able to serve openly in the armed forces, affect wider things that simply themselves in that context.
You want to get America working again - but it broke in the first place. Obviously there was some problem there. Simply rebuilding is not enough; you want to make a stronger, better system. And while I won’t claim that allowing gay people to marry will create a more robust economy overnight, it is the ideas inherent in the concept that strengthen the country, and it’s people, at the most basic of levels.
It’s also worth saying that there’s an argument to be made that the best time to alter something is when it has been torn down. Add to something that’s already working, and you’ll get an accessory. Add to something that’s still the process of being built, and it becomes part of the foundation.
IIRC, in 1992, Bill Clinton said exactly that. He said that he would issue an executive order lifting the ban on gays in the military. As was his way, he did not do that once in office but settled on the compromise DADT.
And I welcome the day when they morph entierly into that function. I understand the Roman army built some nice roads in Britain, too; so I won’t hold my breath.
They fight (or deter) wars that have to be fought or detered because of the mistake of fighting the previous war; which in turn was fought because of the mistake of the previous war, etc.
If American gay issues bore you, perhaps a little blood, sweat and torture will rile you up? I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the same good Christian men who support bigotry against homosexuals in the USA are all too happy to support genocide in Uganda and other African countries (you need a Harper’s account to read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt, and might be available in full with some Googling).
Marriage and military service might seem mundane, especially since they are two ever-present institutions in media and pop culture – only the message for 10% of Americans is 'This is brave/important/natural/fundamental/American… but not for you!
But then how mundane are drinking fountains and bus seats?
[QUOTE=wikpedia, on account of me being too lazy to search for the story on NPR – specifically the Fresh Air show from last month]
The policy was introduced as a compromise measure in 1993 by President Bill Clinton who campaigned on the promise to allow all citizens to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation.[7] At the time, per the December 21, 1993 Department of Defense Directive 1332.14,[8] it was legal policy (10 U.S.C. § 654)[9] that homosexuality is incompatible with military service and persons who engaged in homosexual acts or stated that they are homosexual or bisexual were discharged.[7][10] The Uniform Code of Military Justice, passed by Congress in 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman, established the policies and procedures for discharging homosexual servicemembers.[11][not in citation given][improper synthesis?]
Congress overrode Clinton by including text in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (passed in 1993) requiring the military to abide by regulations essentially identical to the 1982 absolute ban policy.[10] The Clinton Administration on December 21, 1993,[12] issued Defense Directive 1304.26, which directed that military applicants were not to be asked about their sexual orientation.[10] This is the policy now known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
[/QUOTE]
It wasn’t entirely Clinton’s fault. In 1993, the year he took office, as part of the military budget for the coming new fiscal year (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994), Congress codified the ban on those who have committed or are deemed to have a propensity for committing homosexual acts from serving in the military and required their separation if already in. An executive order cannot override the law. (Edit - Beaten to the punch by Skald).
[QUOTE=Slithy Tove]
And I welcome the day when they morph entierly into that function. I understand the Roman army built some nice roads in Britain, too; so I won’t hold my breath.
[/QUOTE]
Roads themselves do not directly save people’s lives. Humanitarian and disaster aid does. Just because the US Army isn’t the Salvation Army doesn’t mean the good works they and the other services do should be summarily dismissed as “not good enough.”
Not to take this thread entirely off-track - and your stated pacifism aside - but are you really making the “WWII and Korean war should not have been fought” argument?
Well, if the government decided to start criminalizing and actively preventing people from engaging in BSDM activities, most people wouldn’t get their panties too bunched over it, either. But I’m pretty sure you’d see what’s wrong with it.
These issues aren’t about votes. They’re about what’s right.
y’know, if I had been around to fight during the Jim Crow/Civil Rights era, I’d have found that kinda boring too. “Oh, god, we have to convince the retards that it’s OK for black people to go to the same bathroom, eat at the same lunch counters, drink from the same water fountains as white people. And to let them vote! Jeebus, sometimes I’m embarrassed to be human, much less American. Can’t we get on to something interesting?” Sure, it was the right thing to do, but … so humdrum, so fucking OBVIOUS if you weren’t a retarded bigot.
And yeah, if the issue affected me personally I’d prolly see it differently, but I’d LIKE to think … and I DO think … I would have the requisite objectivity to see that solving the economic and political problems are issues of much greater magnitude.
See, now I think the proper way to go about it is to say to the people who object to equal rights “Sure, I suppose I can try fixing your problems. Now here’s what I want first.”
I’m talking about the masses, particularly the younger potential voters, who develop their early political leanings from news magazine covers, SNL, The Comedy Channel and places like that.
Those younger voters generally favor repealing DADT, but most of them see it the same way as Evil Captor. It doesn’t affect them, so they don’t care. The number of voters who care about issues which don’t directly affect them to the point that it affects their votes is infinitesimal, really.