Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Senate failed in an attempt to avoid a Republican filibuster of the Defense Reauthorization Act (which contains an amendment overturning a 1993 law banning gays from openly serving in the Armed Forces).
One gay activist group actually complained in a press statement that the current amendment to repeal the ban on gays didn't go far enough anyway. They wanted the legislation to include transgenders (the umbrella term for cross-dressers, drag queens, transsexuals and she-males).
This is a short-term victory for the U.S. military. The vote was 57-40. The Senate needed 60 to overcome the Republican threat.
Now that it's unlikely that the ban will be overturned by attaching it to the Defense Reauthorization Act, Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-VT) are working together to craft a standalone bill that could likely come to a vote before the lame duck session ends. Senator Reid is trying to make it happen on Thursday, December 16, days before the Lame Duck session is supposed to end.
Perhaps Lieberman and Collins will add "transgenders" to the category of individuals who will be free to serve in the U.S. military.
If Lieberman and Collins want to be totally transparent about their objectives, they should include some of the recommendations offered by the Pentagon working group that issued its report on December 1st on how to deal with lifting the ban on gays in the military.
Among those recommendations are:
1. Prohibiting separate facilities for sexual orientation groups, "starting with men and women in all military branches and communities." You read that right – no separation of men, women, gay or straight – in the service.
2. Mandating a zero tolerance policy on dissent. No public statements or actions would be permitted against gays in the military.
3. Authorization of grants for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) training programs to change "unacceptable attitudes" in the Army and Marines over homosexuality.
4. Revocation of sections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit consensual sex for homosexuals.
5. Authorization for the Selective Service to begin drafting men and women to serve in the military. This recommendation anticipates that as many as 264,600 service personnel may leave the military if the ban on homosexuals is lifted.
In short, the military will become a captive of the LGBT political agenda and soldiers will be forcibly retrained to accept homosexual behaviors or they will be forced out of the service. This is no way to treat our Armed Forces – especially when we're fighting two wars and face a possible third conflict with North Korea.
Of course, if the Lieberman/Collins legislation fails, President Obama undoubtedly has other options up his sleeve. He might just sign an Executive Order that effectively kills the 1993 law or he could direct the Pentagon to craft policies that make it impossible to enforce the law. Clinton undermined the clear intent of the law; Obama is likely to do the same.
During recent Senate hearings on overturning the ban on gays in the military, it was obvious that the combat arms elements of the military are the ones most concerned about the impact that repealing the 1993 law will have on combat readiness, unit cohesion and morale.
Our military is too important to be subjected to a social experiment by forcing warriors to associate with individuals with same-sex attractions in close quarters.
