Thank you, Mr. President. My question is about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal compromise amendment that faces House and Senate votes as early as this afternoon. Adm. Mullen said yesterday of the conditions in the amendment, “That trigger is to certify whether we should move ahead with that change.”

Earlier, and repeatedly, however, Sec. Gates said of the study, “This is not a question of if, but how.”

Which is it, Mr. President, and is your understanding of the compromise that the certification is discretionary? And, if so, why is that discretion necessary if the study truly is only looking into how to implement repeal?

But, I did not get to ask my question, so, it remains unanswered.

Here is the background, from my two reports at Metro Weekly on Wednesday: “Discretion Required,” about the impact of the amendment, and “Digging Into the Details,” which looks at the Senate vote count and features my interviews with Reps. Murphy and Frank on the House side.

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.

[Thanks to Andrew and Glenn for the links!  Welcome readers, and be sure to follow me on Twitter. -Ed.]

Andrew Sullivan’s Sunday column this week is his description of and thoughts about President Obama’s leadership style.  It’s a great read that I urge folks to check out. He concludes:

The more you observe, the clearer it is that Obama is working on an eight-year time cycle. He wants deep structural change, not swift superficial grandstanding and conflict. He is taking his time and keeping his cool. The question is whether a volatile electorate in a terrible economic time will be patient enough to wait.

An issue not raised in Andrew’s piece is LGBT issues and the president, an issue near to Andrew’s heart and oft found on his blog.  The piece, though, better than most, is at the same time the perfect description of what I take to be the President’s view toward advancing LGBT issues.  From the conclusion back through Andrew’s description of the President, it works.  Earlier in the piece, Andrew writes:

As he had once written when describing his strategy as a black man in a white world: no sudden moves. And we have seen none. Obama likes the system; he just wants to make it work for more people.

Obama is also, at his core, a community organiser. Community organisers do not jump into a situation and start bossing people around. They begin by listening, debating, cajoling, inspiring and delegating. Less deciders than ralliers, community organisers explain the options, inspire self-confidence and try to empower others, not themselves. If you think of Obama even on a global stage, this is his mojo. And those community organisers do not tell you to expect instant results. It takes time when you try to build real change from below. But the change is stronger, deeper and more real when it comes.

Efforts at making LGBT change “more real” is what I see happening in the Obama Administration.  The fact that Robert Gates, President Bush and now Obama’s Secretary of Defense, and Army Secretary nominee Republican Rep. John McHugh are going to be two of the top civilians working with the military on the repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell  — particularly in light of continued difficulties coming from the military leadership — is genius political strategy that anyone who can step back from the day-to-day struggle must admit.

Although Andrew wasn’t writing about “gay issues” in his column, his analysis of Obama is proven all the wiser when applied to the LGBT concerns and issues that I’ve been focused on these past few weeks.  Andrew’s conclusion, as well, might serve as a statement to LGBT activists, specifically:

[Obama] wants deep structural change, not swift superficial grandstanding and conflict. He is taking his time and keeping his cool. The question is whether a volatile [constituency] will be patient enough to wait.

Isn’t deep structural change what we want?  Aren’t political grandstanding and culture-war conflicts the very problems that we, as LGBT activists, want to work to end?

Many people would say that we shouldn’t need to “wait” for equality, and they would be right.  But let’s be clear that having the patience to take careful, intentional steps that will best accomplish our goals, which is Andrew’s point,  is not the same thing as being told that our issues don’t matter and that we’ll just need to wait on our changes.  This isn’t waiting for waiting’s sake; this is waiting so that solutions are real and permanent.

People want change and we want it now, but that’s not going to make it reality.  Maybe, just maybe, if we give this President a chance, he could actually come through for us — with real, lasting equality advancements.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported this week on the suspected murder of Navy Seaman August Provost, who was found dead in a Camp Pendleton guard shack on Wednesday. Initial reports indicated that Provost had complained to his family about someone “harassing and bothering” him, but the 29-year-old sailor was reportedly reluctant to talk to his superiors about this because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Provost’s murder is a horrible story, and a serious investigation is needed and, apparently, happening.

Steve goes on, though, to detail a story of AmericaBlogReality, showing once again that John Aravosis stubbornly refuses to let facts get in the way of his narrative that Obama hates the gays.  Go check it out.

Yesterday, it was John’s remarkable statement that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was enunciating the Obama Administration’s “3/5ths a man” solution to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  This is, of course, an astounding statement referencing the U.S. Constitution’s statement prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment that “all other Persons” — slaves — were to be counted as 3/5ths a person.

In reality, though, Gates was saying that the Pentagon was looking at ways to do exactly what Rep. Alcee Hastings and 76 other members of Congress asked the Administration to do.  But for John, doing exactly what advocates asked him to do last week is not good enough this week if it doesn’t fit John’s narrative that the Obama Administration wants nothing to do with us.  [And, as I state in comments, "Sec. Gates made clear that his statements were in the context of “discussing legal parameters for a repeal and interim steps before Congress passes legislation changing the policy."]

Today, John attacks Steve Hildebrand, an openly gay man who helped run Obama’s campaign.  Hildebrand wrote in The Huffington Post:

There are three critically important pieces of legislation that should pass Congress and move to the president’s desk immediately. You were elected on a promise to help people — to make a difference in people’s lives. Because discrimination is unacceptable, you should move forward now to pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act, the National Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

By stating this, in a piece critical of Obama and Congress for their lack of action on LGBT legislative issues thus far, John concludes:

The new Obama talking points don’t even include DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as priorities any longer.

. . . .

After two weeks of the Obama White House reeling over the gay backlash caused by the anti-gay DOMA brief, which compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, we now have the number two guy on the Obama campaign suddenly writing about what our legislative priorities should be. Don’t think for a minute that this essay wasn’t either written by the White House, written at their behest, or at the very least cleared with them. This essay is the White House’s thinking on gay issues.

No, John, that is not what Hildebrand was writing.  He was writing about three bills that he believe could pass easily and should be passed immediately.  In light of the attacks that Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network founder Kevin Jennings is taking in his nomination to run the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, I think the addition of the Safe Schools Improvement Act to Hildebrand’s list of legislation is a positive sign — even if, for some reason, one assumes that Hildebrand’s piece was coordinated in some way with the White House.

Since when does calling for immediate passage of legislation mean that other bills are off the talking points of the Administration?  Since when does one person, not in the Administration, stating one goal imply a disavowal of all other goals?

Assuming bad motives when people who like us are doing things that we have asked them to do seems to me to at least be ill-conceived, if not worse.

[RELATED: Adam Serwer, who usually writes at TAPPED, had this excellent piece today at The Atlantic, looking at Obama's actions and words on LGBT equality when compared to Lincoln's actions and words on Emancipation.]

[Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates said both he and senior military leaders broached the subject with administration officials last week, discussing legal parameters for a repeal and interim steps before Congress passes legislation changing the policy.

“One of the things we’re looking at is there flexibility in how we apply this law,” he said. “To give an example … if somebody is outed by a third party, does that force us to take action?

“I don’t know the answer. But that’s the kind of thing we’re looking at, seeing if there’s a more humane way to apply the law until it gets changed.”

This is part of the request made by Rep. Alcee Hastings and 76 other members of Congress last week.  This would be an excellent move, and Gates’s statement is itself quite a great sign of change from the Pentagon on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Could this be the behind-the-scenes work that we’ve been assured Obama is doing on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

Yet Gates appears ready to send a signal on another front. He reportedly favors the nomination of an openly-gay man — William White — to the department’s new deputy chief management post. White has worked with the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.

This does not appear to be some “nothing” job.  From the Office’s Web site:

The Deputy Chief Management Officer (DCMO) is the senior official responsible for assisting the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, acting as the Chief Management Officer, effectively and efficiently organize the business operations of the Department of Defense. The Office of the DCMO supervises and oversees the Defense Business Transformation Agency and the DoD Performance Improvement Officer. The Office of the DCMO was established by Congress in the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act and stood-up within the Department of Defense on October 9, 2008.

I’ll be watching for this.  Having an openly gay person in such a prominent position at Defense could make a world of difference — and now could be just the right time to add that voice into the discussion.