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Senate Repeals 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
An anonymous reader writes "The Senate and House have now acted to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, [a decision] which President Obama will soon sign into law. While this does not permit homosexuals to openly serve, it does return control of the policy to military leaders after nearly two decades."
Now get rid of torture and death sentence and you'll upgrade from stone age to bronze age!
Its not much of a thought. DADT was implemented because nothing was in the books, so it became an issue when individuals had (for lack of better terms) issues.
Now that all you do is remove the policy, the same problems will come back, because now there is no policy to say that you cant discriminate.
You can find similiar problems with the US constitution; historically, we have had to specifically state that women or black people also count. Sadly, there are plenty of places in the US where if those ammendments were not made, they wouldn't.
Given the scale of the US political system I am amazed anything gets done at all. I am coming to the view that we would be better off globally with smaller countries and more power given to local authorities. It is possible that population growth has turned formerly manageable nations into unmanageable ones.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Let's see. Does the name Alan Turing ring a bell? The same guy who saved more lives in WW2 than anyone else by cracking the german cypher codes was also forced to take female hormones to chemically castrate him to avoid going to jail for being gay (1952).
The military owes a lot to the gays and lesbians, both civilian and military, who put up with the intolerance and ignorance to serve their country. The military is also the single biggest spender on technology. Any change in military hiring and staffing of this nature is relevant.
The summary is a bit inaccurate - the military is in fact required to implement the repeal; the actual timetable is set out in the bill, based on certain milestones. So DADT is pretty much dead.
I'd rather have the gays in the military than the homophobes. At least then they'd all believe in the freedom they're fighting for.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
If anyone's worried about that, they can continue to choose to hide their own sexuality as long as they please. And I'm pretty sure they're more qualified to make that decision than some random blowhard on the Internet.
Let me start off by saying I often agree with the Republicans, but I have been saying DADT was a bad policy since it first came about and it has nothing to do with gays serving in the military. This policy was a side step, it was like the solution of cutting the kid in half for joint custody, no one liked it. The reality of this policy after all was not "Don't Ask Don't Tell", but was instead "If we don't find out it is ok", just look at the number of gays in the military that were outed through no action of their own, who then had to face the punishment. At least now we can move on to something that is A POLICY.
I think you need to pay closer attention. The Democratic congress has worked almost every work day of each month, with some time off during the traditional times taken off. The Republicans are the ones who are never in session. during the Bush years, they worked 10 days a month... and the new house leadership has already scheduled next years session and they are back to 10 days a month.
Let me change one word in your first sentence (in italics):
This has got to be one of the stupidest moves they could make. Make and repeal all the laws you want, but there's no getting around the fact that there are some people that just hate blacks.
Which was very true when the army was first integrated, and it's still true today. Many of those people were in the army then, and some of them still are.
The army survived integration, though, and it's fine. It'll survive the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and it'll still be fine
Why is Guantanamo a priority and DADT isn't?
Unlike the Iraq war, practically speaking, Guantanamo doesn't make a big difference. There are only 174 people there. The biggest benefit to closing it is a "we care about people's rights" angle. Which is an excellent idea, but doesn't DADT fall into the exactly same category? It probably even affects many more people in the practical sense.
Are you kidding? What we need is better citizens.
You must admit that this is not about equal rights, but about about getting more bodies to help blow shit up.
America is headed toward a state of perpetual war, but still has an all-volunteer force. Nobody would support or comply with another draft.
This same bullshit happened twice already. Negroes in the Army..Oh Noes..its the end!! Women in the Army..our forces are doomed. Openly gay Gays in the Army. There will be a bit of friction and then the Army will adjust OK. Anyhow it's nice to see the bigots are now out and the gays are in.
Seriously, if somebody wants to pick up a rifle and go defend my cowardly ass, why on earth would I care who they sleep with when they're on leave.
Why not? I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be able to.
I'd prefer to have neither really.
I think both DADT repeal and Guantanamo closing should have happened long ago. I just don't think that social progress should be stopped until all terrible injustices get resolved first. Otherwise we can get into a loop of:
Let's repeal DADT? No, there's Guantanamo first
How about now? No, there's the Iraq war first
How about now? No, now we started another war somewhere else
How about now? No, there's...
And progress for millions gets stopped by something horrible happening to a few people somewhere. I'm not saying to reverse the order either, we could just do both things. There are millions of people in a country, it's possible to fix several issues at once.
The largest percentage of illegal immigrants (most of whom don't pay taxes)
That's bogus. They pay sales tax, they pay property tax via rents and the ones who work with fake papers pay income tax via withholding and fica and they don't get refunds or social security. The ones who work under the table make so little that they would probably qualify for the tax credits and other services given to the working poor if they were legit.
The stupid is strong with you.
Alan Turing wasn't some random gay person "working with technology." He fucking invented it.
Douchebag.
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BMO
You used a lot of big words and I was worried that I might have missed something. Now that I am assured of my understanding, I am free to say that I disagree with your assertion that this repeal is not meaningful. It may mean nothing to you, but it means a lot to those affected by DADT. Civil rights are not a binary bit, civil rights or no civil rights. The fight for civil rights is like fighting a forest fire. You have to stamp out what you can, when you can. Also, I find it saddening that you think so little of those who work for equal rights, that you believe that they can be distracted from the ultimate goal of equality for all, with what you feel is a little sop. I understand your disaffection for the government and their manipulation of the people. It makes me angry too, but I sense at the end of your sentiment the belief that we can do without government and a military is immoral. That may be me putting words in your mouth though. All life is based on struggle. We as humans are in a nearly unique position to transcend that struggle, but we must acknowledge that we are nowhere near that position yet. Sometimes I feel like we are falling further from that goal. Until we get there, we will need mediation for conflict. The government is needed for peaceful disagreement, the military when that disagreement gets not-so peaceful. We need a government, we need a military. However, there may be imperfections that need fixed.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Okay, I get that. So your civil rights are forest fires, while the civil rights of gays in the military are private swimming pools? You want equal rights, but their choices aren't right choices and should be disregarded as not part of the movement?
A man's beliefs are fundamental in forming his opinions. That is why I brought it up. I deduced that you were at least a libertarian and/or a pacifist because of your dismissal of this repeal. A man who disagrees with his government's actions wouldn't have decided that it means nothing. He may have considered it a small step, but not nothing or, as you seem to see it, a setback. Who we are and what we believe has everything to do with how and what we argue.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
The word imperial was not coined to describe the US.
Well, duh. That doesn't mean the US isn't an imperialist, just that it isn't alone (especially in history).
overall, the US is a force for good in the world.
I would never say the US has done no good in the world. But I can't agree that it has done more good than harm. The US began its empire, immediately after leaving the British empire, by conquering an entire continent, dispensing with hundreds of nations and millions of people in the process. It then conquered and annexed half of a neighboring country (Mexico). Much of the receding Spanish imperial territories (Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico), then the Philippines where hundreds of thousands were murdered. Then Hawaii. Overthrown governments include: Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq. It's intervened on behalf of the Phalange movement in Lebanon, death squads in Colombia (and really all over Latin America), brutal dictators like Pinochet, Suharto, Hussein, Zia-ul-Haq, and on and on. It's the only country on earth to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations (twice!). Following WWII, it reinstated fascist governors throughout contested areas of Italy and Greece. It's supported genocide in East Timor and Kurdistan, committed genocide in Indochina, and been the primary source of support for Israel's ongoing colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine for over 40 years (with a lesser degree of support going all the way back to the Nakba in 1948). It is currently engaged in two military occupations which have taken hundreds of thousands of lives. In Iraq, it has displaced about 20% of the population. In Afghanistan, it continues to escalate against the wishes of the population, and the consequences—already pretty bad—will only grow worse.
And that's the short list. The one I could do off the top of my head, insofar as I could keep it roughly chronological. But here I want to take a step back and point back that imperialism is a precise term, and the moral and emotional qualities we're attaching to it are not part of its definition, but rather our reaction to it. Imperialism is the imposition of a state upon other populations. It is absolutely precise to describe the US' role as imperial. What you or I think about that is another matter.
ascribe bad motives to the US to the exclusion of everything else
I never said the US is unique. I don't know where you got that idea.
After fighting and defeating the Axis in the 20th century
Not alone, and not consistently. The US leadership was enamored with Franco and Mussolini, and had high regard for Hitler. Had the alliances played out differently, it's not inconceivable that the US would have entered the war on their side, particularly as a bulwark against the "real" threat (the Soviet Union), but really its immediate quarrel was with Japan, which is where it placed its focus. Germany was defeated primarily by the Soviet Union.
and helping to put things back together
In part by constructing a post-war economy that helped to stall European recovery at the advantage of the US.
and not completely taking away the sovereignty of the vanquished should tell anyone that the US wants a dominant position, but not an empire.
This is how *all* successful empires are run. The British had their Rajas, the Ottomans provincial autonomy, and so on. Few empires maintain absolute control over their entire sphere of influence, but instead shape the politics of the dominated places to be subservient to the central power.
I indirectly refer to my sexuality at work all the time, like every time I refer to my wife as in, "Yeah, no problem I can stay until 5 today, my wife is getting the kids today."
Being required to keep your sexuality hidden, basically amounts to a ban on talking of, even indirectly, your private life.
Are heterosexual soldiers required to completely refrain from making any statement that tags them as heterosexual ? Are they allowed mentioning the wife ?
It's blatant discrimination to require silence from homosexuals, on topics heterosexuals are free to discuss.
... and that the internal oppression is used as a means of social control in order to divide people who might otherwise unite to stop the broader system of oppression.
All of which is to say, speaking as a queer personally, I do not see a meaningful improvement in the cause of justice by allowing queers to go kill and die for US imperialism.
A meaningful queer civil rights struggle would be anti-imperialist and anti-militarist by default, and the extent to which it disregards those values it is actively undermining the fundamental moral principle of equal rights.
As a straight man, I supported the repeal of DADT for the same reasons that I support gay marriage. First, I believe that it's none of the government's business. Second, I believe that these "issues," along with many others, are intentionally used to split the population and keep them from uniting on issues that are really in there best interests. So in a way, I agree with you. But there are gays that want to serve in the military, and there are gays that want to get married and the fact they can't is discrimination. As long as this issue is unresolved, it will be an effective wedge. That and I guess I'm just a bleeding heart.
Now, in my opinion, focusing on the imperialism and militarism of the US is still focusing on a symptom. The cause is that over the last 150 or so years corporations have been acquiring all the rights of individual humans (and shedding the responsibilities). Therefore we do not have a government of the people, by the people. The "American interests" we spend billions (oops, trillions) to promote and defend are rarely in the best interest of most actual Americans.
P.S. Now that the SCOTUS has reaffirmed that freedom of speech is a corporation's "right" and furthermore money is speech, it's only going to get worse.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
You could make the same argument about any number of rights issues: "Whether or not you agree with civil rights, it's hard to argue that allowing blacks to vote and ending segregation is a priority when we have the Vietnam War and Soviet imperialism to worry about. Until we do something about that, civil rights is an utter waste of time" Or how about:"Whether or not you agree with the suffrage movement or not, it's hard to argue that it's a priority. After all we have the Great War to worry about. Until we win against Germany, debating about an amendment to give women the vote is an utter waste of time"
How can we say that basic civil rights aren't a priority? How can we say that ending discrimination is a waste of time? That justice is just too inconvenient right now? Because that's exactly what you're arguing. Our society is fundamentally about rights and liberties. The right to speak and assemble, the right to worship as we choose, the right to privacy, the right to a just trial, the right to pursue happiness- to live your life. Those rights aren't an inconvenient afterthought, they're the entire point of the country. It's critical that gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military, because it's defending the rights of everybody, including and especially those who are different, that makes the country worth fighting for in the first place. If we aren't doing that, then everything else becomes just a waste of time.
This paper seems to cover some of that ground: "The Eros of Achilles: Homoerotic Bonding Among Combat Soldiers" by J Laskaris - Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, 2000 - vol 10 p139 onwards.
Wow, awesome find.
First of all, there's a section titled "Mantaming Sparta."
Second, there is this very interesting passage:
Jonathan Shay calls attention to our culture's homophobia as inhibiting or preventing combat soldiers from expressing their full grief at the loss of close comrades - a process that he considers essential in preventing post-traumatic stress disorder and states that, ''Veterans need to voice their grief and love for their dead comrades if they are to heal. However, many have learned to keep quiet because of their culture's discomfort with love between men that is so deeply felt."
That's an aspect of homophobia / "don't ask don't tell" that few think about.