Earlier today, I was remarking how impressive Kerry Eleveld has been at The Advocate, providing a voice “in the room” of the White House and, more generally, capital news corps that equaled any other voice “at the table” of government influence. She has, with help from Ana Marie Cox, refused to allow “the room” — not to mention White House spokesman Robert Gibbs — to forget about LGBT issues.
Eleveld wrote a very reasonable piece — though I quibbled with its ending — this weekend on The Advocate’s Web site about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Although she reached a slightly different conclusion (that I’ll get back to in a second), she explained that, though not coming from the White House, it is clear that action is going on behind the scenes on the military policy. Describing the comments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates that I wrote about last week, she wrote:
This week may have marked the slow demise of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — albeit in rather unremarkable fashion. . . . It probably seemed somewhat ho-hum to the casual onlooker, and that’s just the way the White House wants it. . . .
The revelation that DOD is now considering altering its regulations “until the policy gets changed,” according to Gates, is basically a complete one-eighty — even if it didn’t grab the usual high-profile flip-flop headlines this nation has come to know and love.
As I pointed out this past Tuesday: “Could this be the behind-the-scenes work that we’ve been assured Obama is doing on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”
But, then, at the end, I felt that Kerry interpreted things slightly differently than me. As opposed to my interpretation of Obama as a smart politician getting the civilian leadership in the Pentagon to move the ball on this touchy issues with senior military leaders, Kerry concludes something else:
But one thing is clearer all the time, this administration pulls its strings behind the scenes, masterfully masking how they plan to get from point A to B. So if you are awaiting attention-getting acts of courage on LGBT issues like “don’t ask, don’t tell” or the Defense of Marriage Act, you could very well be left dangling.
The avoidance of “attention-getting” measures makes sense to me, and I see that as a strength of this president that we certainly did not see in either of our past two presidents. But Kerry’s decision to turn that into a sign of a lack of “courage on LGBT issues” veers off course into speculation that her article’s facts belie. If by “courage,” Kerry means a willingness to jump off a cliff with no parachute, then she might be right. But I think Obama actually wants us to make it down the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell cliff in one piece.
Then, with that slightly differing view in place, Elelveld wrote a piece for The Huffington Post.
There, Eleveld goes on the attack — against the very statement from Gates that was worthy of praise for being “a complete one-eighty” on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in The Advocate.
And her choice of what to attack — statements from Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen that they are searching for ways to implement Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in a more “humane” way — is all the more confounding. In the new piece, without once noting that Gates’s statements were couched as being an interim step “until the policy gets changed,” Kerry wrote of the use of that word, “humane”:
Whatever comes up, usually it involves people being urged to properly value the life of something that, for some reason, might be considered sub-human. It’s the act of visiting kindness or compassion on something deemed less deserving — which made it all the more telling last week when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he was seeking “a more humane way” of enforcing the military’s policy that bans gay men and lesbians from service.
Far from demeaning servicemembers, I read that quote as a dig that the policy itself, inherently, is inhumane. That’s why I liked it so much, for it admitted the fundamental problem with the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy itself. Of all the legitimate critiques of the military and its leadership, and there are many, I just don’t see seeking a more humane implementation of a policy that inherently dehumanizes LGBT members of the military as “offensive.”
The policy is, of course, offensive but military leadership — both civilian and uniformed — trying to implement ways to make it less bad until Congress acts to repeal it is not worthy of such criticism.
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
Thoughtful and well reasoned article. It avoids the fact that almost every other military organization in the free world allows gays and lesbians to serve openly. Some have done so since 1973. Some never had the bans at all – ever. It’s not rocket science. Soldiers do what you tell them. Isn’t that the whole basis of military discipline?
I absolutely agree that Gate’s use of the word “humane” was to contrast what he sees as an overly rigid and unfair policy as DADT relates to overall conduct as cause for discharge.
The problem with so many people who are passionate advocates, is the old chip on the shoulder.Its quite easy to take an “either you’re with us or against us” attitude and expect an all or nothing victory. That same George Bush approach is not some patented conservative attitude nor a liberal attitude, its a human attitude.
That viewpoint all too often colors how people receive information, which to me explains why someone might react in such a manner.
…nice analysis Chris
Semocrats have a 60 vote majorirt, yes, but, sadly, they’ve accepted the ‘automatic’ filibuster in the Senate, which means it can need all 60 votes — or votes from Republicans — to pass legislation.
That 60 votes include Ted Kennedy, who has been reported to be unlikely to be able to cast a vote again — and you have to be physically present on the floor to vote, no ‘proxies’ allowed.
It includes Robert Byrd, 91, ailing, and never pro-gay.
(And note that, were Kennedy to leave the Senate, Massachusetts law require a vacany until election, a minimum of three months. And Byrd would be replaced by a Republican Gubernatorial appointee.)
It includes Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, two extremely conservative democrats who have opposed gay right repeatedly — and if the strong gay community in New Orleans could influence her, there is no substantial visible gay community in Nebraska that could counteract the conservatism of the state.
It includes Bob Casey, who believes employers should be permitted — but not mandated — to give benefits to same sex couples and supports civil unions.
It includes “Blagojevich’s Legacy” Roland Burris, and Ted Kaufman, with no recorded position I know of on gay rights (though my gut puts him on our side), and Jon Tester, who has spoken against gay marriage.
It also includes Joe Lieberman, unpredictable at best, who has been all over the map on our issues — and almost everything else — and Jim Webb, whose ‘progressivism’ is mostly his anti-war stance, not his position on social issues.
So those who argue that ‘it would be easy for Obama to pass gay-positive legislation if he really wanted to’ might do some counting. And they might remember how far we are from a Parliamentary system, and how any elected Democrat is free to ‘take his or her own path’ on anything.
We have to keep pressing Obama, publicly — and I’m sure he welcomes the fact of the pressure. More we have to press the doubtful and slow mebers of Congress, reminding them how much of their majority was provided by us. But we won’t be effective if our statements are Aravosian paranoia, if we scorn every positive move he makes in our direction, if we start out assuming ‘he is a worse enemy to our community than Bush’ if we assume his ‘caution’ is ‘unconcern’ about our community — at best — instead of seeing it comes from wanting to do something that works and will last.
It’s easy to make a strong public push for a bill that you know won’t pass and gain credit with a community. (The Republicans did that with anti-abortion measures and Pro-Life Amendments, and anti-Flag Burning Amendments for years.) Getting something actually passed — and not ‘watered down’ during passage — is a lot harder.
An update for DADT. The repeal bill was introduced in the House by Ellen Tauscher, who has since been named to Obama’s State Department. But this actually helps the bill, because the new point man is Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, and while Tauscher could have been attacked as an ‘outsider who doesn’t understand the military’ Murphy’s background rules that out. “In addition to serving two deployments in Bosnia and in Baghdad, Murphy was awarded a Bronze Star and his unit earned the Presidential Unit Citation. He is also a former West Point professor and an ex-military attorney.” See Steve Benen for more on Murphy.
The bill currently has 150 co-sponsors. (For those who argue that ‘blacks are against us,’ while I didn’t search the list against the entire Black Caucus, the black co-sponsorship is very high — including my own Congressperson, Yvette Clarke who may have the safest seat in the House, and there are Hispanic and Asian Democrats as well.)
The complete list of co-sponsors is here and I’d like to ask how many of you who are constituents of these Congresspeople have bothered to write, phone, or e-mail them, simply thanking them and encouraging them?
But the problem is in the Senate, as i wrote above. May I suggest that those of us who live in states with dubious Democratic senators invest in reasonably large op-ed ads in the papers that cover their states, reminding them of the proportion of the gay vote they received — if this is available through exit polls — and demanding not that they ‘vote for us’ but that they refuse support to a Republican filibuster designed to keep the bill from coming to the floor. “A vote against cloture is a vote against the bill.” (And this tactic and slogan should be used in other non-gay related matters as well. No one dmands Democrats vote in lockstep, but they have no right to duck out on the bills by supporting Republican filibusters.)