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Barney Frank opposes Gates’ DADT review, slams McCain
Out Massachusetts lawmaker Barney Frank thinks Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ proposed year-long review of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell policy” is nothing but a delay. Rep. Frank told Michelangelo Signorile in a radio interview on Friday that if Congress has any hope of repealing DADT in 2010 – as Obama has instructed – then the review needs to be shortened.
“As quickly as we can do this it will be toward the end of the year,” Frank shouted to Signorile, “so Gates has plenty of time to study whatever the hell he wants to study.”
Frank also went after Sen. John McCain in the interview, who has joined ranks with popular Republican opinion that lifting the policy could disrupt unit cohesion as we engage in two wars.
“And that John McCain…I think the last vestiges that John McCain is an independent guy ready to resist the right wing should be buried,” said Frank.
The Hill reports:
President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address he backs a repeal of the policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen also said be backs ending the policy at a hearing on Capitol Hill this week because it is “the right thing to do.”
Gates also said he backs a repeal, but he announced a year-long Pentagon review of the policy this week intended to intended to identify how the military would implement the policy without disrupting unit cohesion.
The move answers Republican complaints that lifting the ban on openly gay service members could ruin the camaraderie among soldiers in the field. Some Republicans have also said that now is the wrong time to nix “Don’t ask, don’t tell” because the military is engaged in two wars.
Out freshman councilmembers changing debate in New York
Danny Dromm and James Van Bramer made headlines last fall when they won their elections to the New York city council and doubled the number of openly LGBT voices on the council. Today, these out leaders are changing the debate and using the bully pulpit to serve LGBT New Yorkers.
“I’m a strong believer of when people get to know each other, it’s very hard to discriminate against each other,” said Dromm to EDGE. “As legislators, we can bring that home to our colleagues because we’re openly gay.”
EDGE reports:
Dromm and Van Bramer are the newest members of what many affectionately dub the City Council’s “gay and lesbian caucus.” Councilmember Rosie Mendez [D-Lower East Side] and Speaker Christine Quinn [D-Chelsea] round it out, and Melissa Mark-Viverito and others have periodically proclaimed themselves honorary members. Both men maintain their election will allow them to use what they categorized as the Council’s bully pulpit to push for marriage for same-sex couples and other LGBT-specific issues.
“There will be opportunities for us to stand up as a unit and express our feelings and express our power-as we did with Jorge Steven López Mercado,” Van Bramer said to EDGE earlier this week.
Dromm, who chairs the Council’s Immigration Committee, agreed.
“I’m a strong believer of when people get to know each other, it’s very hard to discriminate against each other,” he said. “As legislators, we can bring that home to our colleagues because we’re openly gay.”
Dromm added his and Van Bramer’s election broke a glass ceiling, but the question remains: Will they, Mendez and Quinn have any collective power to further advance an LGBT legislative agenda at the city and state levels?
Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College, became the city’s first openly gay elected official with his election as a Democratic district leader in 1977. He told EDGE gay and lesbian Councilmembers could prove pivotal during the upcoming city and state budget process. They could prove decisive in shaping the discourse over funding for HIV/AIDS services and the city’s Human Rights Commission and the implementation of safer-school programs.
“I would look for members of the state legislature and members of the City Council to mobilize to protect the community from what could be dangerous retrenchment,” Sherrill said.
Florida’s GOP senate hopefuls support ban on gay troops
Both Republican candidates vying for their party’s nomination to become the next U.S. Senator from Florida say they oppose efforts to repeal the ban on openly gay servicemembers, according to the St. Petersburg Times:
U.S. Senate rivals Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio both said today they oppose abolishing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy affecting gays and lesbians in the military.
The 1993 policy was intended to be a political compromise that let gay men and women serve so long as they stayed silent about their sexuality. But President Barack Obama and top military leaders say it is time to end the discrimination all together.
“We are a nation at war. The governor believes the current policy has worked, and there is no need to make changes,” Crist campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said.
“Marco Rubio supports the current policy and doesn’t see any evidence it needs to be changed,” spokesman Alex Burgos said.
One of the two is likely to face U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) in the general election this November.
Via Towleroad.