Socarides
As has become clear, Richard Socarides’s wording in his Wall Street Journal op-ed about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was less than ideal, but I am astounded by the Left’s strange desire to turn his wording on its head.
Socarides, in the paragraph in question, wrote:
Many wonder when their president will show the same kind of concern for the constitutional rights of gay American service members as he has for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay. Many wonder what the administration’s willingness to treat gay Americans as second-class citizens says to Uganda and other countries that are considering laws that would subject gays to imprisonment and even death.
Adam Serwer, at The American Prospect, writes of Socarides:
He has decided unilaterally that the U.S. is justified in depriving them of their rights regardless, or at least more justified than denying the rights of LGBT servicemen to serve openly.
Where and when did Socarides write that President Obama’s constitutional concern for those at Gitmo is a bad thing?
Serwer and others turn Socarides’s statement on its head and assume the Right’s view that protecting the rights of those at Gitmo is a bad aim. If read as the good step that Serwer, Glenn Greenwald and others (including myself) viewed Obama’s move on closing and restoring rights to those at Gitmo as, then it looks very different. Why wouldn’t Socarides’s words be read simply as stating — particularly in conjunction with the Uganda sentence — that people would like to see Obama show the same sort of moral leadership as to mistreatment of U.S. LGBT soldiers that he is showing about violations to the rights of detainees and Ugandans.
Socarides’s are not the precise words that I would have used [specifically, as I've noted elsewhere, his use of the phrase "enemy combatants"], but I also think you need to be looking for a fight to read his op-ed as saying that the “U.S. is justified in depriving” Gitmo detainees of their rights.
[UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald, responding:
What's the point of pitting Muslim detainees against gay people in order to argue that the latter are more important?
Where does Socarides do this? Not in The Wall Street Journal, that much is sure.]
Popularity: 7% [?]
Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political writer at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, 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
I agree, that is a very odd conclusion for people who read that statement. When I first saw it, I found it to be harsh and unfair in terms of representing Obama’s views towards LGBT community. But even then it was clear that it was in no way an indictment of how we treat Gitmo detainees. It was clear his intent was a similar comparison of how German POW’s were allowed to eat at lunch counters in the South while Tuskegee a pilots were denied the same right. In other words, not that we should mistreat POW’s but rather we should show greater respect for the rights of those who serve our country.
I am not positive about this, but my understanding is that DADT is Congressional statute that the president cannot unilaterally repeal, whereas the treatment of enemy combatants is dictated pretty much entirely by the executive branch. I suppose Obama could advise the Pentagon to try to circumvent DADT in their administration of the law, but that kind of goes against having the president faithfully execute the law. Why isn’t Socarides singling out members of Congress whom he expects to be stepping up and cosponsoring a repeal?
Adam Serwer may be a gay rights infiltrator!
Given the outraged tone of the op-ed and the controversial nature of the treatment of Gitmo detainees, it is only natural to assume that he meant, “Obama loves foreign terrorists more than he does LGBT Americans!” If he wanted people to know he thinks recognizing detainees’ rights is a morally courageous act, he needed to say it.
Anything that is “only natural to assume” is something obviously not stated in the piece. So, no, I don’t think that’s the answer.