OBAMA SIGNS REPEAL OF DADT INTO LAW

From the Advocate:

In front of several hundred LGBT advocates, President Barack Obama Wednesday signed legislation that will allow the military to lift the 17-year-old ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military. The president said the achievement marked a turning point for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocates across the nation.

“We are not a nation that says ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ We are a nation that says ‘out of many we are one,’” Obama said from the stage, where he was accompanied by Adm. Mike Mullen, Zoe Dunning, Eric Alva, House speaker Nancy Pelosi and majority leader Steny Hoyer, Rep. Patrick Murphy, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins. Collins joined the group late and was met with enthusiastic applause, and Murphy received a extended standing ovation when Obama called out his name from the stage.

The repeal of DADT is a major victory for justice and fairness. The time for ending the discriminatory and unworkable policy was long past, but perhaps, we would not have arrived at the repeal of the policy today, had the years since Clinton set the policy in 1993 proved that DADT was unworkable.

I will never forget that a number of gay Arabic languages specialists were discharged under DADT around the time we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Brilliant! Read the New York Times to see what the DADT policy cost the US military, just in the area of Arab language specialists. And that's not to mention the valuable personnel in other service specialties.

Obama and the Congress can take victory laps for the repeal of DADT and for what appear to be sufficient votes to ratify the nuclear treaty with Russia. Thanks due to the Democratic leaders in the US Senate and House for keeping the Congress in session until their work was done and their goals accomplished.