Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives voted, 234 to 194, to approve an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. (Read our story here.)
This afternoon, the House voted to approve the defense bill in its entirety. The vote was 229 to 186.
The Senate Armed Services Committee voted last night to approve the same amendment to their version of the defense bill, but Republicans in the Senate have vowed to keep fighting the amendment when it comes to the Senate floor for a vote. They have said they will filibuster the whole defense bill to try and kill DADT repeal.
Even if the amendment passes in the Senate, too, the policy will not be immediately repealed, thanks to a compromise requiring implementation of the repeal to wait until the Pentagon completes a study on its impact — expected in December. Then the president, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have to certify that the repeal wouldn’t hurt military readiness.
THEN, when all those hoops are jumped through, there would be a 60-day waiting period before the policy is actually repealed.
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, while applauding the compromise that got the positive votes in the House and in the Senate committee, are warning closeted servicemembers not to come out because they can still be fired under DADT.
Read the warning at SLDN.org/StillAtRisk.
2 Comments
As of today, the Republicans have enough votes for filibuster – 41. This includes Jim Webb and Mark Pryor.
I think the Republicans will push this one vigorously and prevent the approval of the Defense funding because the “Compromise Repeal” can be easily spun as “ignoring Military Leaders” and “shirking Congressional responsibility,” not to mention the usual ‘fear the homosexuals’ crap.
It’s hard to defend the non-compromise, non-repeal charade because it says “let’s decide NOW, and then look at the study in a few months.” That’s easy enough for most people to understand.
The Rethuglicans would still have black people sitting in the back of the bus if they thought they could get away with it. We are in the midst of a war on terror, the worst economic climate in decades, one of the worst environmental disasters in history and all the Rethuglicans are truly concerned about is preventing gays from marrying and serving openly in the military. With priorities like these, it’s no wonder we’re losing the war on terror.