Wasn't Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy another way of throwing Gays under the bus?

[Bonobo]

Seems that way to me.

A compromise? In which people can't disclose their sexual orientation? And she says that was a way that gays could serve "openly"?

How does she figure that one?

[Cant trust em]

1. She's on record saying this was a bad compromise n/t

[Bonobo]

2. I heard her say it was an important compromise.

Look at some of the pain this "compromise" resulted in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9x3Af1gZo

[Cant trust em]

9. Here's where I got this

in her autobiography Living History, she calls “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a terrible “compromise” of her husband’s presidency

http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=124&id=18014

I'm not defending any position, but this is what I read.

[maddiejoan]

3. Hillary Clinton and Gays in the Military:

Hillary Clinton supports the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and supports the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military."It hurts all of our troops, and this, to me, is a matter of national security," she said to a group of HRC supporters.

just to clear that up

[Bonobo]

5. Good to hear she changed her mind on the issue.

[maddiejoan]

8. She didn't

And Bill Clinton originally proposed allowing Gays to serve in the military openly.

Did he get what he wanted?

Nope.

He got DADT though --and it was better than what we had beforehand.

[goodgd_yall]

Thank you---it seems this is always forgotten

That Bill Clinton wanted to eliminate discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military. His proposal was NOT DADT. THat was the pathetic policy that was compromised because of strong opposition in Congress to eliminating this kind of discrimination in the military.

[DiamondJay]

4. its called POLITICAL COMPROMISE

in politics you cannot get everything you want sometimes. especially after the anti-gay Reagan Revolution in that dragged from 1980 to the president in 1993, it just wasn't happening with gays open in the military. President Jerry Brown, Tom harkin, or Bob Kerrey, if they had been elected wouldn't have done any better.

[sarge43]

12. The minute Colin Powell, then Chair JCS, publicly announced

he was against open acceptance of gays/lesbians in the military, DADT was the best that could be done. Clinton didn't have the political clout to take on a popular general and the majority of the flags.

[blm]

16. He created a War Room for NAFTA. But not for healthcare or gays in military.

He also threw Kerry under the bus on that after Kerry led the advocacy on the hill for gays to serve openly in the military.

[sarge43]

27. I lost any respect I had for him because of that.

Not only kneecapping the LGBs who were honorably serving, but publicly disagreeing with a superior. He wouldn't have tolerate that from any of his subordinates. That was a blatant violation of military standards.

[mondo joe]

29. My only problem with DADT was that I felt Clinton shouldn't have taken on the issue

at that time anyway. There were other more important issues that distracted from, and IMO weakened.

It was a rookie mistake.

[sarge43]

36. Yup.

Re my post, #34.

[IndianaGreen]

58. and so was the Dredd Scott decision

LGBTs are less human than heteros, just as Blacks used to be when the republic was founded.

[DiamondJay]

68. there is no comparison

where are the signs which say "no gays allowed" on water fountains or bathrooms.

[JackBeck]

6. Slight correction:

"In which LGBT people can't disclose their sexual orientation".

BOSSHOG, an amazing LGBT ally on this board talks of how he knew many gay people in the service. It was never a problem. But with DADT is when the shit hit the fan. But I do believe both candidates are on record as saying they would fight to overturn DADT. But Obama went one step further, by pledging to re-instate those fired under DADT.

[sarge43]

24. I'll have to disagree with BOSSHOG on that one.

There was less official harassment of LGBs during and following Nam, but the reg were still on the books and used. About the only thing that changed were the witch hunts - dozens of people accused at a time, usually because they knew one another or hung out together. That stopped. The shit has always been in the fan; it's just getting more notice now.

[MADem]

7. It was a compromise, and it wasn't really a bad one, revisionist history notwithstanding.

Had Gore taken his rightful role as President, DADT would have gone the way of the DoDo NLT 2005. Probably the January after his reelection, is my guess.

Anyone who doesn't see the political considerations there is obtuse, of course. There likely would have been a period of "non enforcement" prior to the change-over.

The implementation documents are drafted, and stuffed in a file cabinet somewhere at the Nut House, if they weren't tossed by the rabid righties.

[gateley]

10. I don't think it really accomplished anything. I was embarrassed by it. nt

[sarge43]

14. As bad as it still is, it isn't as bad as it was.

Hitting the reverse button, stopping at early '60's: Witch hunts (whole units under investigation), months under investigation while whatever the branch called Internal Affairs dithered around, discharges for 'tendencies' and 'tendencies' could be just about anything including sharing a room with someone else under investigation, a mere accusation could do the trick. For the record meant no leave, no reassignment, security clearance pulled which could put you on rock painting duty or KP for the duration, no promotion, ie you were a non-person. As said this could on for months. More than one person went crazy or committed suicide. In other words no matter what your sexual preference and sexual history was, there was nothing you could do. You were guilty until ... well, you know.

[gateley]

15. I guess I was just hoping for more, and got that impression from what he'd

said prior to the election, so I was disappointed. (Granted, I wasn't paying as close attention as I would have If I was gay.) I'm glad to hear it WAS an improvement -- hopefully the first of many. :)

[sarge43]

26. I've followed this for 40 plus years because

I've had many good friends and co-workers chain sawed by military homophobia and I'm hoping that soon a real change will come.

[JackBeck]

18. DADT legalized discrimination.

Did those discharges look like this?

http://www.sldn.org/binary-data/SLDN_ARTICLES/pdf_file/1454.pdf

DADT made the environment even worse. I've heard from many DU servicemembers that even though sodomy against the military code of conduct, rarely was it enforced. DADT created such a hostile environment, that the definition had to be expanded to "Don't Ask. Don't Tell. DON'T PURSUE". Pathetic.

[mondo joe]

20. That discrimination was already legal. DADT was intended to improve conditions

for gays.

[JackBeck]

25. And it didn't.

Part of Clinton's platform when he ran was improving LGBT servicemember's lives. Congress, from what I recall from a Clinton Rolling Stone interview from a few years back, was trying to embarrass Clinton once he got into office. I still think this "compromise", though, was attained to secure a second term, throwing LGBT military members under the bus.

[mondo joe]

28. Really? I thought it happened pretty early in his first term.

Perhaps I misremember.

[JackBeck]

31. It did happen early in his first term.

Which is my point. Republicans wanted to embarrass him because he ran on such a pro-gay platform. Erode any political capital before he has a chance to bank any, which is why they pressed this issue right off the bat.

[sarge43]

34. No you didn't.

He proposed removing the ban in 93, way too early. There were too many Reagan and Bush appointed flags to deal with. He tried to get more flexible flags into position like Adm Boorda and we saw what happened to him. A POTUS doesn't take on the military establishment lightly; it's a political wolverine.

[JackBeck]

42. Like I've said before, Clinton claims it wasn't his idea to pursue the matter:

"I tried to slow it down, but the first week I was president, Senator Dole - who, I think, saw it as an opportunity - decided to push a vote in the Senate disapproving of the change in the policy. I tried to put it off for six months, and the Joint Chiefs came down and raised hell about it."

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Bill-Clinton-Rolling-Stone.htm

[mondo joe]

44. I have a memory of him being asked about it in some unguarded moment by the press,

and at the time I thought he gave a poorly thought out answer supporting the idea of removing the ban.

Even then I was mortified and thought he should have said "That's a fine question, but we have greater priorities to address now."

[paulk]

39. 1993, actually.

[UALRBSofL]

11. Nice Try

:)

[KennedyGuy]

13. Unlike Obama..Clinton never embraced "curing" gays

[Frances]

17. Where were the Clinton bashers when DADT

was being considered?

The Democrats in Congress paid a HUGE price for speaking up for gays.

Commentators on the right and left said that Bill Clinton squandered his honeymoon by "pandering" to gays.

Many people thought that Clinton's support of gays is what cost the Dems the Congress in 1994.

The parallel is President Johnson's support of the Voting Rights Act. Johnson predicted--correctly--that the Dems would lose the South as a result of their support for voting rights for African Americans.

It's OK with me if DUers want to support Obama.

But it's not OK to distort the role that brave Dems played in getting as many rights as they could for African Americans and gays.

I have my doubts about how many DUers would have had the courage to speak up for causes that would have cost them so many votes.

[JackBeck]

21. Ummm. No.

Sam Nunn (D), U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services.

"Congressional opposition to lifting the ban on gay and bisexual people in the armed forces was led by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia who organized Congressional hearings that largely buffed the armed forces position that has remained unchanged since the 1981 directive."

[Frances]

49. But how many Dems vs how many Repubs

tried to do the right thing by gays?

I have thought for a long time that people like you who pointed out the few Dems who voted for something that the huge majority of Repubs voted against hurt the Dems tremendously.

The unthinking person bought your reasoning and concluded that there was no difference between the Dems and the Repubs.

That led to many unthinking people deciding that there was no difference between Bush and Gore and that therefore it was OK to vote for the "likeable" guy.

[JackBeck]

53. Nunn was the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services.

These things had to be voted out of committee before they reach the floor for a vote. Any Democrat that lends their vote to implementing discriminatory policy IS just like a Repug. DADT had to get out of committee, survive cloture, and receive a simple majority, get voted on in the House, get parsed over in a bi-House committee, before reaching the Presidents desk to be either vetoed or signed. All this before Gingrich's Contract With America put the Congress in Repug hands. More than "a few Democrats" helped this measure pass, including a Democratic President.

[Frances]

55. You prove my point

You focus on the Dem who did not do the right thing rather than on the Republicans who did not do the right thing.

You argue the exact same way that Nader supporters argued to me in 2000.

By the way, both Senators from Georgia are now Republicans. Saxby Chambliss, who avoided service in Vietnam, defeated Max Cleland, who lost 3 limbs in Vietnam. Many people think the ad showing Cleland morphing into Obama was the defining ad. (Cleland had voted for airport checkers to be able to unionize.)

Nunn protected himself by his actions, but many Dems did not and many of them were defeated in 1994 as a result of their votes on this issue.

I am curious: Would you have behaved like Nunn or would you have had the courage to go down to defeat for a vote that was the morally right vote to make?

[JackBeck]

57. I did nothing to prove your point.

You must have misread my post, or maybe I didn't make myself clear. In a Democratically controlled Congress, DADTDP passed...with the Democrats holding the majority.

[Frances]

61. Exactly

And DADT was the best that could be done for gays at that time.

You can blame Clinton if you like, but that would be like blaming Dems for the Iraq War because Dems are in the majority in Congress now. We all see how the Repubs prevent the Dems from enacting positive legislation, even something as simple as expanding health care for poor children.

You can be against Clinton for a variety of things but DADT at that time is not one of them.

[JackBeck]

63. Are you being willfully obtuse, or completely missing what I've been saying?

I'm blaming EVERY Democrat who voted for this becoming policy. We had a Democratic President with a Democratically controlled Congress. And yet this still passed.

By no means is this anywhere close to your illogical argument that it "would be like blaming Dems for the Iraq War because Dems are in the majority in Congress now". WTF?

[Frances]

69. I was too polite to ask you the same question

I can only guess that you are either too young to remember 1993 or that you weren't paying attention to what was happening then.

I remember only too well military people arguing vehemently against both women and gays in the military.

I remember that most of the population agreed.

I also remember an Admiral's wife saying that the Tail Hook scandal of the 90s was the fault of the military women who were attacked.

Just because women and gays have more rights today than they did then doesn't mean that those rights came without a lot of fight--and compromise.

[mondo joe]

19. No. It was a compromise that let gays serve, albeit with a burden they shouldn't have

to bear --- but they got to serve.

Like many advances, it was not enough, but it was progress.

[KennedyGuy]

33. I can testify to that..

was it perfect? No..
Do I get to serve? yes!
Proud gay, proud to serve.

[Bucky]

22. It was a step forward

It's clearly time to take the next step, but let's not lose site of the big change that it did represent in 1993.

[JackBeck]

37. How was this a step forward

when the leading Democratic candidates want to overturn it?

[mondo joe]

38. It was a step forward in its time.

It was progress.

[JackBeck]

43. How is this progress?

http://www.sldn.org/binary-data/SLDN_ARTICLES/pdf_file/1454.pdf

Not to mention the many soldiers who were brutally murdered under the DADTDP policy?

[mondo joe]

45. That it didn't pan out - possibly due to failure to adhere to policy - doesn't mean

it wasn't progress in the right direction.

[JackBeck]

54. How is a failed policy a step in the right direction.

This is one of many examples of Democrats "compromising" that lead us to having our three branches being run by Right Wing Fundies.

How many times did Bush compromise? None. He had a rubber stamp Congress with a Democratic minority that voted too many times along with them. If Clinton had took a stand as the "Commander Guy" and laid out the policy that he ran on, I wonder if things may have been different.

[Malikshah]

23. Get your history right first. Then you'll see the need to stop starting

flamebait threads.

Hillary had nothing to do with DADT.

Another poster pointed out the context w/ Colin Powell (who should have been fired)

Jeez, folks.

Read a book or a newspaper before posting.

[ErnestoG]

30. I think he whimped out on the issue. He was the CIC....

and, as such, he had the absolute power to ORDER the military to stop restricting Gays from their ranks. Remember, Truman did something similar with intergrating Blacks into the Armed Forces. When one of the bigotted Chiefs of Staff approached him with his personal problems regarding integration, Truman asnwered him with this "Maybe we had a miscommunication. See, I just gave you a direct order." And then said if the gentleman had any more issues with the new policy, that he would be happy to receive his resignation the following morning.

THAT is how you make a decision with military policy. Too bad Bill Clinton didn't feel it important enough.

[mondo joe]

32. I didn't think it was important enough either. As a gay man, I had far greater priorities.

I think the biggest mistake was even addressing the issue that early.

[terrya]

35. Completely right.

ENDA could have been passed. A Democratic controlled Congress, Clinton on record in favor of it...

Look, I appreciated Clinton addressing lifting the ban on gays and lesbians in the military. But it was just way too soon.

[mondo joe]

40. I would ad that it was a gay man - Barney Frank - who fought for the compromise.

He didn't want to squander opportunities on this either.

[sarge43]

50. Issuing an order and enforcing an order are two different things

A POTUS can fire a few generals, BFD. He can't fire the whole freaking armed forces and if it decides to dig in, that order may get some token acknowledgment, otherwise it's hand waved.

Yes, the military was officially integrated, units, barracks, clubs, etc, but in the things that matter, promotions and job assignments, black service personnel had a tight glass ceiling well into the Nam war.

Plus, following right on Truman's heels was a CinC who was old time Army and not the least bit interested in enforcing racial integration in the US military.

[goodgd_yall]

41. That happened under BILL Clinton's term

How is this relevant to Hillary?

Besides, if you remember, Bill Clinton wanted to eliminate discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military. Funny how people forget the first intention. It wasn't flying with Congress, so this policy was devised as a compromise. Before it, the military could actually ask you if you were gay and throw you out if you answered truthfully. It wasn't much of an improvement.

[JackBeck]

47. It was such a catastrophic failure

that they had to tag on "Don't Pursue" because it became an even more vociferous witch hunt.

Proud to see our country develop policies in line with the Axis of Evil.

[sarge43]

56. Not only ask you, it could investigated you without cause and

if it decided you had 'tendencies' regardless of your actual sexual preference and history, you could and, often did, get the boot. DADT isn't good and it's subjected to much abuse, but it does put some kind of brake on some of vicious harassment that use to go on.

As for gays being murdered, like that didn't happen before DADT? It did.

[JackBeck]

60. One small point:

"Sexual preference", which you have used a few times in this thread, is offensive to the LGBT community. YOu may not be using it intentionally, but our community prefers "sexual orientation" or "sexual identity".

[sarge43]

62. Very well

One large point: I never intented to offend. Quite the opposite and I would appreciate you not implying that.

[JackBeck]

65. Where did I imply you were trying to be offensive?

I gave you the benefit of the doubt by saying that you may have been using the term unintentionally.

[sarge43]

66. Because you have no way of knowing my state of mind, so

you have no reason to give me the benefit. All you had to do was inform me what terms should be used.

[JackBeck]

67. Which I fully acknowledged when I said:

"You may not be using it intentionally".

In kind, I informed you how offensive that term was, supplied you with what many progressives regard as proper terms, and in return you accused me of categorizing you as willfully being offensive, which was the farthest from what I had done.

I really don't understand your point.

[Tatiana]

46. It was a compromise and (Bill) Clinton made a tough call.

He wasn't trying to discriminate against gays. The thing was, he had a ton of military CO's wanting to ban gays from military service. If you asked if a serviceman was gay, he or she would likely tell the truth... and then be summarily dismissed.

If you couldn't ask about someone's orientation, then you wouldn't have grounds to dismiss them. This was his way to keep gays (who wanted to serve) in the military.

"I don’t believe the United States armed forces should be the last institution in America that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation." - Wes Clark

[DrFunkenstein]

48. One of The First Issues to Become "Clintonian"

Trying to please everybody at all times by fudging a little here and little there. One of the reasons his 8 years were not "transformative." I love(d) Bill, but he should have stuck to his guns and lead more often instead of trying to triangulate according to the constant polling world.

There was a reason so many of us were looking for a progressive alternative in 2000. And it wasn't because of Monica.

[bernicewilliams]

51. As far as I know, Clinton has a good record on gay rights n/t

[MonkeyFunk]

52. No

Republicans are responsible for it. Clinton tried to the right thing - he didn't throw us under the bus.

[QC]

59. I guess he should have just gotten Donnie McClurkin to pray their gay away. n/t

[okasha]

64. At the risk of ruining your evening--

It was Bill Clinton's Justice Department that included sexual orientation in the list of protected categories for recipients of federal funds. I work for a unit of local government in a very Democratic but also very socially conservative area. I and the other LGBT persons in my department are able to be out at work because of his policies.