House Votes to Repeal 'Don't Ask' as Focus Turns to Senate
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Congress took a small step toward allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military Wednesday as the House voted, again, to repeal the 17-year-old ban on military gays.
The action now moves to the Senate, where a similar bill awaits consideration in the frenzied final days of the lame-duck Congress.The House vote of 250-149 came after heated debate on the arguments that have echoed across the Capitol for months: how risky to combat readiness would it be to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and how fair is it to continue to ban them from military service? Critics threw aside the judgments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the troops are ready for the change.
California Republican Buck McKeon, incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, held that repeal would shatter the morale and cohesiveness of small, all-male combat units. "I don't think it's worth the risk to put them in further jeopardy than they are in now,'' he said. "I implore our members to reject this . . . ''
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged members to repeal the "fundamental unfairness'' of the law banning gays from openly serving. She said repeal would honor "the values they fight for on the battlefield.''Repeal of that law, and the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy implementing it, are widely supported by senior Defense Department officials and by a broad majority of military service members as well as by the public. But repeal has been buffeted by a series of unrelated political and legislative maneuverings that have kept its supporters on edge for months.
Pending in the Senate is a bill introduced last weekend by mavericks Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine. Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, elected last January to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat, told me over the weekend he also intends to vote for repeal. Approval would send it to the White House for President Obama's signature. As a presidential candidate and as president, Obama had vowed to work for repeal.
The Lieberman-Collins bill came after Senate Republicans refused to end a filibuster aimed at preventing the DADT measure and the rest of the mammoth defense budget bill, from coming to the floor for debate. The House had approved repeal as part of the defense budget package last May.
Opponents of repeal took heart from the testimony earlier this month of the military chiefs, three of whom told the Senate Armed Services Committee that they needed more time to prepare their troops to get used to serving with openly gay or lesbian military members.
Unless the Senate acts this month, it is likely the courts will order an immediate repeal, an outcome Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said would lead to chaos and precisely the kind of disruption of morale and combat readiness many critics of repeal have feared. He has urged Congress to repeal the law now, giving the Pentagon time to implement the change in an orderly fashion.
If courts order an immediate repeal, the Pentagon would be required to allow gays to serve openly in front-line infantry combat units, where the resistance is expected to be the highest.
Gates acknowledged greater resistance to repeal among those units. But he cited evidence from a year-long Defense Department study which found that troops who have served alongside a gay or lesbian service member said they experienced little or no impact on their unit's cohesion or performance.
Gen. Jim Amos, the outspoken commandant of the Marine Corps, this week repeated his opposition to repealing the current law, arguing that it would distract Marines in the midst of combat. "Distractions cost Marines lives,'' Amos growled in a session with reporters. -
Senate Republicans Block 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal
Senate Republicans blocked repeal of "Don't ask, Don't tell" Thursday, significantly dimming prospects that the ban on gays serving openly in the military will be lifted during this lame-duck session of Congress.
The 57-40 vote came on a motion to bring the giant defense budget bill, which included repeal of "Don't ask, Don't tell" (DADT), to the floor, with Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid unable to muster the 60 votes to launch debate.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had pinned his hopes on the Senate for an orderly implementation of the change in military policy. The House voted this fall to repeal the 17-year-old law, and a positive Senate vote would have allowed the Pentagon to begin a lengthy process to actually lift the ban.
Unless the Senate acts this month, it is likely the courts will order an immediate repeal, an outcome Gates has said would lead to chaos and precisely the kind of disruption of morale and combat readiness many critics of repeal have feared.Reid and Maine Republican Susan Collins had tried this week to reach a deal to allow debate on the defense budget legislation. Collins was one of three Republicans, including Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who had said they would vote for repeal of DADT. But Brown and Murkowski joined other Republicans in voting to bypass debate on the defense legislation until after the Senate considers extending the Bush-era tax cuts and other matters.
The vote coincided with the release of a new Gallup poll showing that two-thirds of Americans want the DADT law off the books.The Defense Department had reached a similar finding with a yearlong study which surveyed 255,000 of the 2.5 million service members, as well as their families. It found the majority would not oppose serving with gays or lesbians and did not think it would disrupt combat readiness or unit cohesion.
In urging the Senate to take up repeal of DADT, Reid said the law banning gays from serving openly in the military was "obsolete, embarrassing and weakens our military … repealing it will make our country stronger.''
The vote was taken without debate.
Advocates of repeal say there is less chance the new Congress, which takes office in January, will act favorably on repeal. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which supports repeal, urged Reid to keep the Senate in session to try again for a vote.
"While difficult, realistic options still exist for advocates and senators to move repeal this year,'' said Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and executive director of SLDN.
A U.S. District Court judge has already ruled the gay ban unconstitutional and ordered an immediate worldwide lifting of all Defense Department regulations providing for investigation and discharge of gay and lesbian service members. The 9th District Court of Appeals is currently weighing a Justice Department appeal to stay that order and overturn the lower court decision. A ruling from the appellate court is expected in March.
The Pentagon has prepared an 86-page plan to rewrite regulations and educate the troops before repeal of the law is implemented. Defense Department officials said the process would take months, in part because 97,000 military personnel currently serving in Afghanistan could not receive the training until they return home after their tours, which last from four to 12 months.
Language in the legislation that failed Thursday would prohibit any change until the president, defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs certify that implementation would not harm morale or readiness.
"I believe it would be unwise to push ahead with full implementation of repeal before more can be done to prepare the force -- in particular those ground combat specialties and units -- for what could be a disruptive and disorienting change,'' Gates told reporters Nov. 30.
Similar reservations were expressed by the military chiefs in a lengthy and contentious Senate hearing Dec. 3, during which they expressed much the same reservations as Gates. Of the four military service chiefs, the Marine commandant, Gen. James F. Amos, was most outspoken: " My recommendation is that we should not implement repeal at this time,'' he told the committee.
Some 14,000 gay and lesbian service members have been discharged in the 17 years since the gay ban was enacted during the Clinton administration. -
Joint Chiefs Split on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal
As expected, the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos, recommended against repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces.
Testifying Friday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Amos said he could not "turn my back'' on the 45 percent of Marines who expressed negative views of repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" in a year-long Pentagon survey.
"The young men and women who volunteer to be Marines do so with honorable and patriotic intensions, and even vast differences in background, beliefs or personalities can be bridged,'' Amos told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
But among Marine combat arms units, 56 percent said allowing openly gay or lesbian Marines to serve would have negative impacts on fighting effectiveness and cohesion. He said that view was held almost uniformly across all ranks.
"We asked for their opinions and they gave them to us. Their message to me is that the potential exists for disruption to the successful execution of our current combat mission should repeal be implemented at this time.''
But, he added, "based on what I know about the very tough fight on the ground in Afghanistan, the almost singular focus of our combat forces as they train up and deploy into theater, the necessary tightly woven culture of those combat forces that we are asking so much of at this time . . . my recommendation is that we should not implement repeal at this time.''
Amos and the other three military service chiefs were testifying at the second of two days of hearings into potential repeal of DADT.
Of the four chiefs, two not only said their troops could accommodate serving with openly gay service members, but they outright urged that Congress act to repeal the law: Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.
The Army's chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey, did not recommend repeal. But he told the committee that after weighing all the evidence, "I don't envision that repeal would keep us from accomplishing our worldwide missions, including combat operations.''
However, both Casey and Schwartz said they believed the law should not be repealed immediately.
"I don't believe the presence of a gay or lesbian service member creates an unacceptable risk to good order and discipline – and from the survey it appears a large number of our service members don't believe that either,'' Casey said. "But it's a question of timing. I would not recommend going forward at this time given everything the Army has on its plate.''
Schwartz said immediate implementation would be "too risky . . . perhaps full implementation in 2012 at the earliest.''
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged Congress Thursday to lift the ban on gays in the military. That would allow, they said, for an orderly process of implementation. In the legislation that would repeal the law is a provision requiring that the president, defense secretary and joint chiefs chairman -- with the advice of the service chiefs -- certify that all steps have been taken to ensure an orderly implementation of repeal and that the change would not negatively affect military effectiveness.
Should Congress fail to act, they said, the risk is that the courts will order the ban to be lifted immediately, throwing the military into chaos.
