LGBT POV

The White House announced late Monday that President Obama has endorsed a compromise on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. This is in response to a letter from Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA) asking for Obama to weigh in.

Their letter said they “have developed a legislative proposal for consideration by the House and Senate that puts a process in place to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ once the working group has completed its review” and the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs “certify that repeal can be achieved consistent with the military’s standards of readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention.”

A press release issued by the Levin, Lieberman and Murphy said:

“Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag’s response confirmed that “the Administration is of the view that the proposed amendment meets the concerns raised by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” and “the Administration therefore supports the proposed amendment.”

The full letter from Senator Lieberman, Senator Levin, and Congressman Murphy is available online here.

The Administration’s response is available online here.

Friday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that DADT would be a memory by Christmas.

Both Servicemembers United and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network applauded the move. The proposed amendment the National Defense Authorization Act would include a delayed implementation provision that would not allow repeal to take effect until the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group completed its nine-month implementation management study on Dec. 1 and until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that the military is ready to implement repeal smoothly.

However, the letters seem in some ways to be purposefully vague. For instance, there is no timeline for now long the Pentagon can take to figure out implementation. And, though the letter from Levin, Lieberman and Murphy includes in the first paragraph a reference to “this discriminatory policy,” there is no indication whether the compromise the House and the Senate will put forth will contain a non-discrimination clause in addition to repealing the law – or if the compromise would be “repeal-only” which would repeal the law but leave the ban itself in place as it was under President Clinton. This would then enable Obama and the Pentagon to lift the ban through an executive order. SLDN is standing firm that they want the full repeal with the non-discrimination clause, while the Palm Center and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John M. Shalikashvili prefer a “repeal-only” bill with the non-discrimination clause stripped out in order to secure the votes for passage. Shalikashvili wrote in a Saturday op-ed in the Washington Post – if there is NO DADT repeal, the Pentagon cannot move forward anyway:

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is both a federal law and a Pentagon policy. The law ties the military’s hands on this issue. If Congress fails to repeal it, the Pentagon’s study process will be compromised because the Defense Department will not have the authority to implement its own recommendations.

According the AmericaBlog, the next part of the process is:

“Rep. Murphy has to submit the language of his amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization to the House Rules Committee by 5:00 PM tomorrow night. The Rules Committee determines the parameters of floor debate including which amendments will get a floor votes. For the Defense bill, Rules will meet on Wednesday at 1:00 PM. Floor debate should take place on Thursday. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs, will mark up the Senate version of the bill later this week, too. Lieberman and Levin will be attempting to amend the DADT repeal language in Committee.”

But this is far from a done deal. The Family Research Council and military veterans  is holding a press conference call tomorrow to release polling data “regarding the drive by President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to overturn existing law on homosexuals in the military. Perkins will also discuss FRC’s grassroots outreach in the lead up to this week’s expected debate and votes in Congress.

There certainly is excitement in the air – but this battle is far, far from over.