I have nothing against Udall, but this is idiotic:
I am a longtime advocate for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prohibits gay men and women from serving openly in the military, and today I had the chance to speak with three former service members discharged under that law.
For the 17th million time:
DADT is NOT the Law. DADT is a policy put in place by Clinton. As wiki helpfully reminds those who have forgotten:
Don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) is the common term for the policy restricting the United States military from efforts to discover or reveal closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members or applicants, while barring those that are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service. The restrictions are mandated by federal law Pub.L. 103-160 (10 U.S.C. § 654). Unless one of the exceptions from 10 U.S.C. § 654(b) applies, the policy prohibits anyone who “demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because “it would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”
If you repeal DADT, THE POLICY, you are left with the law which dictates that homosexual acts are incompatible with military service. i.e. Gays get tossed out, whether they disclose their “gayness” or not. DADT was an effort to lighten the burden on homosexuals serving, removing that policy will hurt them.
Is it too much to ask that our lawmakers actually understand the laws they are talking about?
Oh TSO, you know better than to confuse Congrescrtters with those pesky fact thingies.
You don’t think it would be funny for Barry to repeal DADT just to find out that we could openly ask people if they were teh ghey…and kick them out?
You gotta wonder how long it would take for them to realize their mistake (The O is never wrong) and pass a new law…
Dutch beat me to it.
Damn going to class crap.
It would never happen though. It would be the end of that officer’s career, and nothing is more important than career to the officer class (excepting these birther wackos).
We in congree don’t need to read no stinkying law
They understand just fine, as do the “educators” at the Ivy League schools that want to keep recruiters off campus. They just lie.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody explain this policy correctly. I gave up years ago trying to straighten people out only to have them argue with me, as though I didn’t know what I was talking about. It is refreshing to see there are still a few people who actually know what’s going on.
I’m guessing someone hasn’t explained to the Advocate/OUT crowd the old expression, “Be careful what you wish for….”
Thweeet!
LOL…
the form you have read to you, you must read and you must sign clearly states that any statement, act or marriage (SAM) is grounds for discharge. basically gay people have to asexual to avoid violation of the policy. if straight people had to conform to the same standards there’d be a mutiny.
excuse me: in violation of the policy or the law, there is little difference.
Yeah, but you only have to be asexual outwardly in the work environment. Nobody’s going to be videotaping what you do in the privacy of your home. Straight soldiers basically have to act asexual in the work environment, too. Honestly, I don’t know which would be more difficult – to be a lesbian soldier and always have to hide your sex life at home, or be a straight soldier surrounded by members of the opposite sex who you still find attractive, but you can’t ever show it. At least a lesbian soldier doesn’t have to pretend in the work environment that she has zero interest in her male counterparts. 🙂 (Since I’m an old lady and several decades out of the military, I can say these things freely now without repercussion. :-))
The question I always wondered and never got an answer on, is how this applies to transgender issues.
For example. Let’s say you have a male servicemember who gets involved with a FTM transgender who is taking hormones and getting surgery. You have a male involved with a physical male, but a genetic female.
Or a male involved with a MTF also with hormones and surgery. Looks straight, but genetically no.
Also, there are currently as far as I’m aware no law prohibiting transgenders in the military. What happens?
< banging my head on my *desk*….Sarge? Report to NCO club….Disturbance in progress, transgendered subjects involved…2000hrs.
Mike Papa 23, 31 and 42 backup Army Sergent…
Wacky woman….sweet but? *ruffling yer hairs* LOL!
Debra you couldn’t be more incorrect about how a gay service member violates the policy/law.
The policy/law doesn’t allow people to be open at home. ANY act is in violation of the policy/law, not just the acts people in the military see. Any statement and any marriage. anybody can report this, just recently police saw a marriage certificate in a gay womans home and they told her chain of command. so no, your home isn’t safe. the policy allowing third party outings was just narrowed, but it still exists.
also, I don’t know what unicorm military you served in but straight people announce their sexuality all the time. this ranges from flirting to talking about members of the opposite sex to marriage rings. I was asked multiple times for my number by different men I encountered.
it is frustrating to see so many people, even those who support repeal, be so misinformed about the reality of the policy/law. I see this a lot on pro-repeal discussions, such as the orignal article TSO pointed out.
just to clarify Debra; any statement or act, even within ones home, is a violation of the policy/law. almost every gay servicemember violates it, unless they are asexual, because the policy is so broad. what leads to discharge is your command finding out.
Where do you get this “any act” thing Jen? Marriage yes, but private acts no. I’ve read the policy on several occasions and follow the prosecutions, and it isn’t private acts that get people tossed. Now mind you private acts are illegal for other reasons (antiquated sodomy law etc) but I think “Act” and “Marriage” are two different issues.
The marriage certificate case was pretty straight forward in my book, although the cops were over-zealous etc. But the policy strictly forbids getting married, she got married. Not much wiggle room on that one.
First off, of course she violated the policy, I clearly agree because as I stated the SAM standard precludes any statement, act or marriage(SAM). The military however didn’t search public records for proof, they received a certificate confiscated from her home during an unrelated police investigation. I used this example to refute Debra’s assertion that ones home is safe.
I have heard lots of gay people say “but I never told, it was wrong that I was discharged” after being discharged. One can only claim this if they ignore what the actual policy bans- any statement, act or marriage.
Second the DADT policy is what sets the SAM standard. The law you quoted above bars the “propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts”.
Neither the policy nor the law excludes acts in the privacy of ones home. Discharge under either the law or policy requires that one’s chain of command know about SAM’s or propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts. Act’s within the privacy of one’s home may be harder to find, so yes you will find less cases, but it is NOT a defense to claim you did these acts in your own home. You will find examples of this in cases where the third party outing was done by a jilted lover. The service member targeted has no defense that it was a “private act”. If so the policy and law would exclude “private acts”, but you’ll see from the law you posted above it does not.
In order to avoid punishment for violation of either policy you must hide/lie about your statements, act’s or marriage. Those three things are what DADT the policy bars. DADT gets lauded as a compromise but it’s simply a different name for the law TSO posted above. It didn’t really change anything. Even the new changes just recently announced don’t change anything substantial, they just change the way proof and paperwork are processed.
After DADT was passed more gay servicemembers were discharged. The only thing I disagree with on your original post, TSO, is that lifting DADT, and not the law too, will hurt gay servicemembers. It won’t really change anything. The requirement of both the policy and law is to lie about and hide your life, unless you are asexual and not doing anything to violate the policy- and not violating the policy is really rare. As rare as male marines not violating the sodomy (oral sex) policy.
The actual DADT policy defines act as (which one will notice sounds a lot like the law):
b. Act. An homosexual act is any bodily contact actively undertaken or passively permitted between persons of the same sex for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires and that a reasonable person would understand to demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in a homosexual act.
http://www.jackson.army.mil/ig/infobook.doc
“Is it too much to ask that our lawmakers actually understand the laws they are talking about?”
Yes. Yes it is.