In response to today’s vote to prevent hasty and premature legislative action on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010, Elaine Donnelly, President of the Center for Military Readiness, issued the following statement:
“The vote today was a huge victory for the United States military. Forty-three senators, on a bi-partisan vote, stepped up to fulfill their constitutional responsibility to provide oversight in matters affecting the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.
She continued, “The military is a strong institution, but the fact that it is subject to civilian control makes it vulnerable to political pressures from civilian activist groups that do not understand the military’s unique culture and mission. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama tried to use the defense bill to score political points with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) activists and other groups they are counting on to get re-elected.
“The annual Defense Authorization Act should be used to strengthen our armed forces, not to provide political payoffs to liberal constituency groups. We are grateful that 43 responsible senators rejected this self-serving attempt to force a pre-election vote on legislation that would have imposed an LGBT policy on our military, authorized abortions in military hospitals, and circumvented orderly systems for legal immigration.
“Today’s vote protected the right of our military men and women to be heard in this debate—an opportunity they would have been denied otherwise. We hope that we will never again see such a blatant attempt to use the Defense Bill for political payoffs and misguided expediency. Our military is the finest in the world, and we intend to keep it that way.”
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The Center for Military Readiness is an independent public policy organization that specializes in military/social issues. In 2010 CMR organized the Military Culture Coalition, an association of organizations that support the current law stating that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military.
