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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."
No, really. You can read this on every other news source. Is there anything slashdot can add?
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 gays. The Don't Ask Don't Tell policy wasn't about discrimination by their superiors, it was about discrimination by their peers. You're not allowed to ask someone if they're gay, and you're not allowed to tell someone if you're gay, and if you do either you will be met with disciplinary action. That was to prevent being discriminated against by the people you work with in the potentially-life-endangering industry of violence and death that is the military.
Until about a week ago, repeal of DADT was a dead issue because it was tied to bigger bill concerning military policy. Obama diddn't do jack squat to move the thing forward, but Senators (Rep and Dem) worked out a way to isolate this issue to move it forward, and this is the result. Google news pieces on this.
Like I wrote, Obama did squat. The guy wouldn't know leadership if it elbowed his jaw.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
where have you been? He has been achieving his goals since day one.
Ya, his goals of destroying the US military, forcing a socialist health care system down our throats, and giving Muslim terrorists as many opportunities to kill us as he can.
as a soldier. I would file for a discharge at the first possible opportunity and choose not to renew any enlistment. You should not have to cover your ass as well as your ass..
Now you can suck dick, and STILL get to kill brown babies, to steal their oil!
God bless America. I think this is what MLK would have striven for.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
By all means, have yourself a gay Christmas!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Gee, I'm glad your mastery of Google makes you so much better informed than people in the goddamned military.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Let's see. Does the name Alan Turing [wikipedia.org] 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.
I think this falls under the "news that matter" business, but that's kind of a weak claim there. A gay guy who worked with technology, and the military buying technology does not make this about technology.
So are you trying to say that it would have been better to continue the open discrimination against LGBTQ? If not, then please stop spoiling a small victory.
If your answer is “yes, because it’s legitimizing our war machine etc etc etc” sorry, that doesn’t fly. American corporations will continue to use the US military to secure cheap resources and promote their business interests – regardless of public opinion. Even if we don’t challenge your guesswork, it’s a major stretch to believe that this change in public opinion would strengthen US militarism. US militarism is dictated by corporate interests and the monied, it needs no help from public opinion because public opinion is easily purchased – ask Freedom Works.
All this repeal does is allow gay people to feel a little less “the other” – and that is a good thing. Please be happy for them.
One issue is that we have special laws for protected minorities like gays. Hopefully the military won't try to treat "openly" gay people as having special privileges in terms of protection from harassment or obscene speech that non-protected minorities don't receive. Are soldiers going to get in trouble for saying things like "that's gay" or "you fag" or "that sucks dick" now because they have to be aware and sensitive to sexuality, even amongst themselves? Seems like a step in that direction.
I don't know why you're wanting to keep rephrasing my points. It's perfectly comprehensible as is, without putting words like "evil" and "good" (as contrasted with "evil") in my mouth.
Is there any chance you can *reply* to the statement instead of twisting it?
I suppose you could make an argument for the Native Americans
You suppose? You'll grant that? Conquering an entire continent, hundreds of nations, and millions of people... might just be imperialist? That is how the US got its start.
The rest of your comment boils down to a misconception that empires are defined by complete subjugation of all the countries they exercise power over, rather than the exact same conquest/hegemony/manipulation/institutional soup that the US uses and has used since the age of outright conquest ended around the time the explicitly imperialist phase you describe did.
However, filling the main public pool in a city is more important than putting out a smoldering house that is already a total loss and won't be spreading. So sometimes the public wins are more important than the more meaningful and less visible pieces because, in the long run, the more visible one will elevate the issue and lead to a quicker overall resolution.
Queer liberation isn't a lost cause, and neither is anti-imperialism. Both will eventually prevail. The "firefighters", to stick with the analogy, are facing a tough problem because they're fighting against arsonists.
The repeal of DADT is not a win, it's a distraction.
Why not? Consistency will often result in a seemingly unrelated opinions giving a good idea of or even defining other opinions held.
I explained why not in another comment. To quote myself, "The only part of my political philosophy that's relevant to this discussion is that I'm opposed to imperialism. I could be a traditional conservative, a Quaker, an Iraqi, a socialist, some heretofore unknown brand of progressive-liberal, whatever, and oppose a policy that I think will bolster imperialism." I mean, I could discuss why being an anarchist leads to being anti-imperialist, but it's kind of a waste of my time because I'm not really discussing any principles that aren't much broader than anarchism.
Really, as I said to the other commenter, if you want to discuss my broader political philosophy, open up a discussion somewhere else and I'll join in, time allowing. But I'm trying to focus on the consequences of a civil rights movement being swept up into an imperialist system. And I think that discussion is both relevant and warranted, and has merit in its own right without putting on trial my vision for an ideal society.
Well that's cute. I'm kind of disappointed that you didn't get even one of those stereotypes right, but oh well.
Go read up on how the British Empire managed its possessions. Or the Ottoman Empire. Or, you know, pick an empire.
The reason you're wrong is because you seek to eliminate personal choice by telling people what is right for them to do.
Not really. All other things being equal, I promote equal rights in any context. But I don't have any illusions that equal employment rights across sexual orientations in the military is not a civil rights victory. It's a triumph of the military's agility and it signifies a change in strategy in the US state. It will bolster US imperialism, and the majority of the queer rights movement that opposes that will come to view it as a mistake.
And if I'm wrong, so be it. I'm willing to be corrected by history.
Insofar as Israel's gay rights record isn't being distorted (which it is), it's not horrible. What's horrible is their manipulation of it as a justification for their imperial/colonial mission. To repeat, again, I am queer. I do support equal rights for queers. I do NOT want them to be co-opted by a morally backwards policy of domination of other peoples. America can't be both a city on a hill and a superpower.
Homosexuals represent one of the greatest disease vectors in society and that alone is reason to keep them out of military. Emergency medical staff have to wear protective clothing because of AIDS. It makes no sense to inflict people with a known 44x(CDC) AIDs rate on soldiers who can't protect themselves from blood in battle. Homosexuals also account (CDC) for 10% of hepatitis A and 20% of hepatitis B. New syphilis cases are homosexuals 64% of the time (CDC). Anal infection with human papilloma virus (HPV) is "at near universal levels in gay men". Homosexual populations in cities are undergoing a huge epidemic of a new MRSA strain - a strain a research doctor in San Francisco said would be lethal to the general population if combined with VRE infections also taking place. The homosexual groups went after that doctor to silence her.
Homosexuality was never proven not to be a disorder. It was dropped as one under political pressure. Indeed GID (Gender Identity Disorder) still exists but will be dropped because of political pressure as well. Of course they will want the military to be forced to accommodate them as well. The behavior of homosexuality is not the same as race etc and deserves no special rights and protections. Like the hoax of global warming, the "homosexual behavior as civil rights issue" is more heat then light. Liberals push the agenda just like they support for terrorists over CIA, illegals over citizens, speech rights for pornographers but not the religious (unless they are terrorists etc). The Democrats pulled the rug from under US troops in 2005 and the left generally resent the military. Homosexualizing it is more important to them than making is safe and effective for members.
On a final note, a congressional report showed most soldiers who were discharged from military under DADT where homosexuals who reported themselves as a way to get out of the military. The idea that there are legions of soldiers waiting to die for the country but being witched hunted out is false. Indeed its a testament to how unintelligent America has become that Dems repeal DADT juts as story broke about an emotionally disturbed (he attacked an officer in Iraq etc) homosexual wiki-leaker betrayed the country because of his displeasure with military. Average people think the DADT thing is over now and they fail to appreciate the PC carnival that is about to fire up and how it will harm the military (and Americans love their military). Repeal of DADT will backfire in a major way. Homosexuals really should have left well enough alone.
"Flesh-eating bug spreads among gays"
"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study, told the Telegraph. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/flesh-eating-bug-spreads-among-gays/story-e6frg6to-1111115341040