In the year since DADT repeal have the haters, liars, and nitwits learned anything?

Statement by the President on the One Year
Anniversary of the Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

A year ago today, we upheld the fundamental American values of fairness and equality by finally and formally repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Gay and lesbian Americans now no longer need to hide who they love in order to serve the country they love. It is a testament to the professionalism of our men and women in uniform that this change was implemented in an orderly manner, preserving unit cohesion, recruitment, retention and military effectiveness. As Commander in Chief, I've seen that our national security has been strengthened because we are no longer denied the skills and talents of those patriotic Americans who happen to be gay or lesbian. The ability of service members to be open and honest about their families and the people they love honors the integrity of the individuals who serve, strengthens the institutions they serve, and is one of the many reasons why our military remains the finest in the world.

"True courage -- the kind shown by our troops on the front lines -- now requires the naysayers to acknowledge their wayward path, and for those who continue to falsely insist that equality is harmful to society (rather than just a threat to their own status) to cease and desist."

-- Nathaniel Frank, in "Who Said What About DADT
Repeal, and What Are They Saying Now?," on HuffPost

by Ken

It's the Right-Wing Haters' worst nightmare: It's been a year now since the already-ridiculously-delayed repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and it's worked out fine -- better than anyone predicted except the people who predicted that it would, that in fact there was no reason why there should be any great difficulties beyond those created by the people who wanted it to fail.

In an excellent HuffPost post, "Who Said What About DADT Repeal, and What Are They Saying Now?," Nathaniel Frank (a longtime DADT-repeal advocate and author of the book Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America) provides this summary of a new report by the Palm Center, "One Year Out: An Assessment of DADT Repeal’s Impact on Military Readiness," "co-authored by faculty from West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps War College" (links onsite):

* The repeal of DADT has had no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment, or morale.

* Recruitment and retention were unaffected by the repeal of DADT. Survey data show that troops were just as likely to say that they would remain in the military after repeal as they were before, and according to Pentagon figures, the military has successfully met its recruitment and retention targets in the wake of DADT repeal.

* There was no mass exodus of military members as a result of repeal, and there were only two verifiable resignations linked to the policy change, both military chaplains.
DADT repeal has not been responsible for any new wave of violence or physical abuse among servicemembers.

* Although repeal produced a decline in individual morale for some servicemembers and boosted it for others, service-wide data indicate that overall, force morale did not decrease as a result of the new policy.

* On balance, DADT repeal has enhanced the military's ability to pursue its mission: Greater openness and honesty resulting from repeal seem to have promoted increased understanding, respect, and acceptance, and the policy change appears to have enabled some LGB service members to resolve disputes around harassment and bias in ways that were not possible prior to repeal.

* The findings of this study are consistent with the extensive literature on foreign militaries, which shows uniformly that readiness did not decline after foreign armed forces allowed LGB troops to serve openly.

Actually, in his post, Nathaniel precedes this list with another list, a sampling of "predictions of harm." Here's a sampling of his sampling:

* "I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage, and we could possibly and probably -- as the commandant of the Marine Corps said and I've been told by literally thousands of members of the military -- harm the battle effectiveness, which is so vital to the support, to the survival of our young men and women in the military" (Sen. John McCain, 2010).

* "[Surveys suggest that if the ban is lifted, a minimum of] 24,000 current members of the armed forces might be lost over and above normal discharge attrition in a one-to-three year period... Because these personnel would be completing one or more terms of service, they would, in fact, represent a hemorrhage of mature, skilled losses from the professional ranks. This is an enormous risk to the viability of our armed forces" (General Carl Mundy, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2010, in a letter addressing Congress).

* "Assimilating openly homosexual Marines into the tightly woven fabric of our combat units has strong potential for disruption at the small unit level" (General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2010, discussing his reasons for opposing openly gay service).

* "If the law is overturned and open homosexuals are welcomed into the military, the number of homosexuals in the armed forces can only increase -- leading to a corresponding increase in same-sex sexual assaults" (Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council, 2010).

* "We believe that imposing this burden on our men and women in uniform would undermine recruiting and retention, impact leadership at all levels, have adverse effects on the willingness of parents who lend their sons and daughters to military service, and eventually break the All-Volunteer Force" ("Flag & General Officers for the Military," a statement of over 1,000 generals and admirals, conceived by Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness, 2009).

" [I]t's critical to pause," says Nathaniel,

as we celebrate the progress of this milestone, to also absorb the historical lesson provided by the empirical finding that equality for gay people doesn't wreak havoc on our country. Opponents of equality will always claim it disrupts society, but the claim is a ruse meant to maintain a social hierarchy with no rational justification. Opponents of equality will always claim it disrupts society, but the claim is a ruse meant to maintain a social hierarchy with no rational justification.

True courage -- the kind shown by our troops on the front lines -- now requires the naysayers to acknowledge their wayward path, and for those who continue to falsely insist that equality is harmful to society (rather than just a threat to their own status) to cease and desist. Where are their voices now?

I'm not normally big on demanding apologies, but in this case it works for me, because an apology includes an acknowledgment of error, and in this case this is what we need in order to move forward.

Offhand I can think of three forms this acknowledgment might take:

(1) "Gosh, it appears that I was wrong."

(2) "I'm dumber than doody -- how could I have helped myself?"

(3) "God, I hate me them homos and lezzies, and when I hate that bad, I'll say any damned thing."

The right-wing haters always like to pretend that their savagery is the result of some kind of principle rather than their (a) ignorance, (b) insanity, or (c) hatefulness. As we discovered in the Prop 8 trial when Judge Walker offered the defenders of the ban on same-sex marriage every opportunity to provide absolutely any kind of legally valid demonstration of any possible harm that might be caused to anyone by legalizing it, they had nothing, absolutely nothing.

Oh, they fall back on their deep religious convictions. But those bibles they prance around with so compulsively, without having any idea what's in them (except the toxic bits spoon-fed to them by megalomaniacal sociopaths, including the dreaded Men in Dresses under the thumb of the mob boss in Rome), have nothing to say about homosexuality except the one infinitely quoted line in Leviticus, interspersed among all those goofy Levitican proscriptions that no sane person pays any attention to. Jesus, as far as we know (and we do all know this, don't we?), had nothing at all to say on the subject. But then, Christianity seems to have devolved into an international society for the obliteration of that goddamned freak Jesus.

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