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Loading ...Mullen advises ‘measured’ approach to gay policy
07.06.2009 10:17am EDT
(Washington) The nation’s top military officer said Sunday he has advised President Barack Obama to move “in a measured way” in changing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military.
Obama as a candidate pledged to end the ban. As president, he has not said when or how he will take steps to do so, drawing criticism from gay rights activists and others. The president has pointed out that Congress in 1993 made into law a policy begun by President Bill Clinton.“It’s very clear what President Obama’s intent here is. He intends to see this law change,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I’ve had conversations with him about that. What I’ve discussed in terms of the future is I think we need to move in a measured way,” Mullen said.
Mullen said he has discussed with his staff what steps might be taken to implement a change in the policy.
“I haven’t done any kind of extensive review. And what I feel most obligated about is to make sure I tell the president, you know, my – give the president my best advice, should this law change, on the impact on our people and their families at these very challenging times,” he said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that he has lawyers studying ways the law might be selectively enforced as part of an effort to find “a more humane way” to apply the law until it is changed.
desert bat what do men usually measure?
it’s your typical pissing contest
What will be measured? Is it a contest?
Would a “fiere advocate” take a “measured approach” toward equality and fairness? I don’t think so. Did Ghandi or Dr. Martin Luther King take “measured approaches”? Politicians take measured approaches, cowards take measured approaches. I remain disappointed.
Some of you seem to think that “rednecks” and “skinheads” and “felons” can’t or don’t get along with gays. Take away DADT, take away kicking out servicemembers for being gay, and you take away the bigots’ biggest weapon. When Truman integrated the Services, there were blacks who were ill-treated, and no it wasn’t made all better. As in the larger society, you still see racism and sexism. The point is that it’s not universal, and more than one study has shown that the US military is far ahead of the broader society when it comes to moving past discriminatory behavior. Will there still be gay servicemembers getting jumped and assaulted or killed by their own? Yes, it will happen–just as it happens to women, blacks, whites, and anybody else in the Services. Bad things will still happen, though not with the same frequency.
Like blacks, like women, when gays are allowed to serve openly, there will be those who will be held to a different and much higher standard. Most who enlist can already do that–they have to under DADT. You get a gay man who’s stronger, smarter, braver, humbler, and he serves with honor, then it puts pressure on the higher-ups to weed out the gang members, the criminals, the peckerwoods.
Whatever you feel about the military, remember that this is about equality. This is about removing an artificial barrier. It’s about allowing gay Americans equal access to one of our oldest and most conservative cultural institutions. We’re not entirely unwelcome there, and like blacks and women, it’s time we assumed our rightful place in that institution.
Smells like bullshit to me.
Obama is Commander in Chief, although he’s sadly weak. DADT is not to be “changed”. It is to be replaced with a non-discrimination law.
I still stay say we should be patient. Vocal but patient and as the months go by we should get louder until being vocal is no longer a choice. Here’s an idea, vote democrat on the state and local level, if they are the best choice, and refuse to support any Democrat on a national level. In
From a friend: Active since before Stonewall 1.0:
“This morning, we were again reminded that Admiral Mullen, the current Chair of the JCS, is a homophobe. His regurgitation of the homophobic DADT “talking points” are not necessary to repeat. At this point, it is clear that the re-hash of the same objections of the DOD and the emerging MIC that his predecessor had with Truman in 1948, is both nauseatic and well-known. Some of his recent predecessors want DADT repealed, while the admiral uses the word “change”, the neocon attitude. The difference is that Truman was not swayed by bigotry and racism. He was, after all, from Missouri, two states in one….where many mothers had sons in either uniform during the Civil War. Obama wants absolute agreement, and that includes Mullen, who speak for the minority on this issue. Where is the Lincolnia in this man…..or for the Truman in this matter. The only Missouri Compromise that President Obama seems to emulate is THAT man, President Millard Fillmore in 1850.
President Obama must pay the price for his treachery. GAY INCORPORATED POWER QUISLING QUEENS must know that the price of treachery is closing the GAY ATM spigot of funds, and a call for these organisations to read their mission statements and renew their efforts on a national basis in a confrontational way, and not an enabling way.
At least, that is how I feel on “the morning after”……”
“Pssh, I dont want dem homasexshuls in my military! I done served in the Vietnam War and almost lost me leg and not one o’ my fellow soldiers was queer. No sir. Im a bible-believin’ hick from Texas and I done dont like that black guy they have there in the white house, he tryin’ to take our tax moneys and now he’s tyrin to act like dem gays are real people? I heard he’s a Mooslem too, dang nabbit!
Ow my back, where’s my Bengay? I mean-wait…”
I want to see DADT thrown on the trash heap of history but the reality of the situation is that because of pre-emptive war, a war based on lies and torture and other factors that we have committed in the last 8 years, you aren’t going to get many capable men and women of normal to higher intelligence and crime-free backgrounds to serve in the military. So, you have to cater to what you can get and that means that if they are homophobic, well then no gays. As Rumsfeld said…”As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” 08 December, 2004
Hah! US still wetting itself when UK, Canada and Scandinavian military can be openly gay.
I have no respect anymore for this “scaredy cat” approach..
If we allowed capable gay men and women of normal intelligence and crime-free backgrounds to serve, there would be no need to recruit sub-standard security threats like felons, thugs, and people who can barely read and write and who haven’t graduated from school. YOU WANT THAT SORT OF PERSON WHO CAN’T READ AND WRITE OPERATING EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT AND YOU WANT TO TRUST HUMAN LIVES AND UNIT COHESION TO CRIMINALS?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY? OBAMA PUT SOME CAFFEINE IN YOU AND WAKE UP FROM YOUR DAZE AND DON’T LISTEN TO PEOPLE STUCK IN THE MILITARY OF THE 1950′S!
If I were a parent sending my son or daughter to the military, I’d be more afraid of the felons and drug criminals than the homosexuals, but the right has done an excellent job of convincing everyone we’re the ones who molest and recruit.
I can understand why the military is reluctant to change the DADT law, but no one wants to say it. We have a volunteer military and the caliber of the people signing up for duty has changed. And since the military is also recruiting skinheads and felons, don’t you think the recruitment numbers of the people they are targeting would fall off if their recruits knew gays were going to be serving, openly, along with them? I’ll be willing to bet that they are considering this scenario.
What do they think our gay men and women soldiers are going to do? Perhaps they think they’ll try to recruit the evangelical, born-agains in the military
to convert to homosexuality. I think the joint chiefs of staff in our military have been smoking joints with their weird, backward thinking.
Some independence day, all men are created equal? What a lie.