How Obama Will Lose My Vote In 2012 (DADT Discussion) - Page 2

The thing about all this lesser of two evils shit is that I don't consider Obama an "evil". He's good for this country dammit. He is the only viable candidate capable of moving this country in the right direction... and if our economy can pick up, we will be moving in the right direction on these social issues even if it's not as fast as you would like, or as fast as you expected.

Obama hasn't done nearly enough about the economy. The way we do business in this country is fundamentally the same as it was under Bush. There should have been criminal investigations concerning the financial crisis from 2008. Instead, Obama appoints two people responsible for the bullshit to his financial team. Not good.

He's done good things, don't get me wrong, but he's played to the middle and hasn't pushed hard enough on issues he said he would (health care being the first that comes to mind).

I'm of the opinion that it is possible to get the economy on track while permitting Americans to participate in society completely as Americans. The "civil rights need to wait until we tackle the important stuff" chestnut is and always has been just a way to pass the buck to some other, more courageous, administration in the unforseeable future.

I saw the thread title and thought Nordling was pissed that Obama likes Die Another Day. Glad I was wrong on that one!

Obama publicly promised to repeal Don't Ask don't tell. If he welshes, he loses the Gay Community, simple as that. A hit in support, both at the polls and the campaign chest.

Oh and LOL the Navy needed a study to tell them "gays are as capable as straights". What, were they afraid gay Aviators wouldn't be able to shoot an Air to Air missile 'cause of those limp wrists? Or a gay Radar operator would be too busy admiring himself in a mirror to watch the radar? SNL or some guy on YouTube should get on this stat.

Fuck electing a President. We need to convene a Council to install a Wizard of the Economy. I remember when George W. Bush went about systemically wrecking the country's finances, and we all had a good laugh about it. And have moved on to blaming the schmuck hired to contend with the mess.

Surely it's the political process that is the problem, and not the fact that U.S. companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion of cash reserves.

yea, well your opinion is misinformed. Unfortunately that's not how our system works because our Congress is easily distracted.

Really? Shall we look at what weighty items were plaguing the Congress of 1964 when the Civil Right Act was passed?

There is ALWAYS time to right an injustice.

Guess he's losing your vote...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/14/mil...gay/index.html

Just as that story broke, this was tweeted to 5 million followers.

ETA: Obama: I believe homosexuality isn't a choice

I assume he means "genetic" make-up. Which would be correct.

...

Fucking hell. I believe that Obama, unlike what many people seem to believe, isn't all mighty and powerful, and that like most presidents, he has to compromise a lot to stay afloat. Like most idealists in politics. But come the fuck on. That gesture was small. So small, yet so important.

Why??? I know I answered my own question, but still, it's so sad.

It's a small gesture that would set a huge precedent, though.

Again, the government has a responsibility to uphold federal laws. But the reality is that the federal government doesn't have the resources to enforce drug laws to anywhere near the extent that the state does. From the article:

My guess is that they'll watch distributors like hawks for any hint of interstate commerce, but not much more.

So I guess there is no such thing as state rights anymore? At this point what is the advantage of a state passing its own laws? Might has well just have it all under Federal control.

That's a two-edged sword. You want states to be able to individually legislate civil rights?

It's a state law that will contradict federal law. Not a fan in this situation, but if Georgia passes a law that outlaws the Affordable Care Act, I sure as shit hope the feds come in here and knock them down a peg.

Really, the best case scenario all along has been that this conflict will lead to federal drug laws being challenged in court. Precedent isn't on the state laws' side there, but one can hope.

Very double edge sword, I would just like to see the states and the federal government work together on subjects like this. Not just show up with a army of lawyers.

I'm curious as to how you see that hypothetical cooperation playing out.

When Sarah Palin is the nominee, you're gonna feel a lot different, Nordling. I guarantee it.

I disagree with DADT. I think it should be repealed. I wish it hadn't come into existence in the first place. Let me get those out of the way beforehand.

Now here comes the "but."

Having served in the military, and understanding a bit about how the military works and some of the people that undertake military enlistment, genuinely integrating gays in the military is indeed a can of worms that is going to require a lot of time, effort, money and logisitical reconfiguring to accomplish. To be clear, none of these obstacles are insurmountable, but they do need to be addressed and the answers aren't necessarily easy.

For example: How do you quarter openly gay soldiers? Het soldiers may not be comfortable rooming with them, so that's not a good idea (let's be honest, there is a TON of homophobia in the military), not to mention a harassment complaint waiting to happen. You can't really quarter homosexual soldiers together, because that's essentially the same as quartering het males with het females (and also a harassment complaint waiting to happen). Yeah, there are plenty of people that can handle it, but it's still asking for trouble.

You can't really quarter homosexual soldiers with heterosexual members of the opposite sex, because just because their orientation differs doesn't mean they're comfortable living in close quarters with members of the opposite sex (to say nothing of a sudden surge in "gay male" soldiers signing up to get quartered with the women...and believe me there'd be plenty of horndogs that would try it).

You can't really give homosexual soldiers their own rooms, because then they're getting preferential treatment (and quite frankly, there simply isn't enough barracks space).

Like I said, I'm sure there are solutions (or at least "best of several not-ideal options"), but these are the kinds of things that have to be considered when it comes to applying a repeal of DADT. It isn't going to happen overnight, and it's going to cause headaches. Headaches worth dealing with, but headaches nonetheless. I do honestly believe that the majority of folks in the military would be accepting of openly-serving gays (even if begrudgingly so in many cases). The might not LIKE it but they'd tolerate it, and I think openly serving gays is better than covertly-serving gays, because I think a lot of the violence towards gays in the military stems not just from homophobia in general, but from the sense of betrayal and humiliation when they find out someone that's shared close-quarters with them was hiding their orientation. Maybe that's naive optimism speaking, but at least when I was in, a lot of folks in the military (at least among the enlisted ranks) are more ambivalent about high-level policy changes than "fired up." Maybe it's changed in the 8 years since I left the military, though.

Of course, things would work out a lot better if we could somehow dispel this notion that all homosexuals are crazed sex-fiends that want to jump on ANY member of their same gender, as opposed to fully realized individuals who have their own tastes in partners the same way straight folks do. I mean I know it's a blow to the ego, but I assume (not being homosexual myself) that just because you're a member of a homosexual's preferred gender doesn't necessarily mean they find you attractive....

Very well said, JuddL. I think people have awful short memories, and when you consider the length of time it took all of this horror to coalesce--including DADT--the insistence on instant gratification seems immature and dangerously short-sighed.

Jmacq1, a lot of that sounds like it could have been written in the 1950s with "black soldiers" in place of "homosexual soldiers". A lot of those issues are just matters of people not behaving like assholes.

Yeah, but this is the military. Getting the military to not behave like assholes is like trying to get the hole in your ass to not behave like an asshole.

In some ways that is a very valid comparison. In others not as much. There isn't an inherently sexual element to mixing races in the barracks. You remove the color and it's simply men and women, who are (relatively) easily segregated/integrated. Heck, I know for a fact that in some cases the desegregation of the military helped pre-emptively solve some of the logistic issues of the later integration of women into the regular military (not to be crass, but let's just say additional facilities were already in-place). It's the sexual elements that makes the homosexual issue more complicated, particularly in a military that's trying to distance itself from sexual scandals (when it's not busy trying to cover them up). As I said, none of the problems are insurmountable, and yes, much of it definitely relies on people not behaving like assholes.

However if there's one thing this country has proven, it's that we've still got no shortage of people who gleefully behave like assholes, particularly when it comes to homosexuals, and particularly (though by no means exclusively) among the Evangelical Christian set, which has a VERY strong foothold in the United States Military right now (particularly among the officer corps).

You let them continue to sleep where they're already sleeping, which is in many situations about two feet from their heterosexual buddies.

This isn't complicated. It's really not. I say this as somebody who's in the military today, right now.

If we're trying to avoid sexual scandals we're going to have to chemically or physically castrate the majority of the guys I work with, because the misogynistic behavior that's taken as normal here is a real problem that exists already, not a hypothetical problem that might exist if we decide to pull our collective homophobic heads out of our asses and start giving people the rights we're supposed to believe in and live by. Heterosexual rape, assault, and abuse of power are regular features of the military we have now. On top of that we've got the abuse that many gay people have to deal with from heterosexuals on a regular basis because they can't say shit if they want to keep their jobs. Nobody's saying straight men are now barred from service.

Yeah, I've worked with a lot of closed-minded assholes and I've seen a lot of good people get shit because of who they like to sleep with, no matter how quiet they were about it. Allowing gay men and women to serve openly isn't going to amp up the problem, it's going to give them a chance to fucking report it instead of just shutting up and letting it get worse and worse until something tragic happens. Again, actually, because it's not like people haven't been hazed and beat to death over it already.

I apologize, but excuses on this issue are bullshit, no matter how earnest you are.

Been the Air Force for 27 years and still going. Not gay that I know of, but then again, I've never tried it. Heh. This is the important part for gays in the military, just like gay marriage. When you make it legal, which we fucking should, you get the rights that we were all promised. All of us. I can't see why this is so hard for us.

And being utterly dismissive that there aren't other considerations beyond "just do it already" is delusional, no matter how earnest you are.

Given how (not) seriously the Army treats most complaints of harassment (unless it makes it to the media...which most of them don't), I find it hard to believe that this magical, sensitive military where all the officers and NCOs will eagerly listen to homosexual soldiers' claims and treat them as anything other than "drama queens" and "boat rockers" will magically manifest with a swipe of a pen. You don't change an entire sub-culture overnight, and even the racial and gender integration of the military were far from painless or completely "simple." The bottom line is that if you complain in the military, you're seen as weak. Filing official grievances can ruin your own career as surely as it might ruin the career of the person(s) being accused, when suddenly you're being painted as "not a team player" on your evaluations (whether NCO or Officer). You point out the elements that are "here already" (abuse of power, misogyny, etc...). You think those are just going to disappear?

Nevermind that I wasn't arguing that it shouldn't happen, just pointing out that there really IS more to it than "just do it already."

They should just do it already. I'm not saying the transition will be easy, but as you and others have noted, none of the transitions that made the military better based on race or gender have been easy. But we are still here. Blacks didn't kill the military, women didn't kill the military and gays won't kill the military. The sooner this is implemented, the sooner the tranistion will be over, or at least the sooner it will start to level out.

When this becomes official, and one day it will, you better believe Officers and NCOs will take it seriously. That's one thing about the military, we do what the regulations tell us to do (well, mostly). If we don't then our jobs are at stake.

I'm not suggesting there aren't other considerations, I'm saying that in the end they don't matter. Most are used callously to slow down the process rather than to earnestly ease the eventual and inevitable termination of the policy. The planning required here should realistically amount to a few updated instructions and regs.


My point was that the current setup isn't a perfectly balanced ecosystem in danger of collapsing if everything isn't taken into account. It's deeply flawed in a lot of ways, but we're steaming on all the same and this won't change that. The issues that will be faced here aren't new in any fundamental way, and the infrastructure to handle them already exists. It's heavily underutilized, undoubtedly, but that's a cultural issue. As you noted, cultural changes take time. Tetir's right in that the clock doesn't tend to start ticking until change is first introduced.

The talk of logistical issues and what not are all bullshit if you boil it down. We already serve with, shower with, eat with and share other accomodations with other nations that allow openly gay people to join up. We do the same with a large civilian support population who support the DOD and I'm pretty sure there's a good chance some of them gay as well. Yet we still get missions done with little to no issues at all.

I'm certainly not of the mind that gays will kill the military. As I've said a couple times, I'm all for the repeal of DADT. I just understand the administration's desire for an "orderly" repeal.

I do see your point about the sooner it's implemented the sooner the cultural change can occur. However maybe the military has gotten better about it than when I was in, but I saw plenty of officers and NCO's that were more about using the regulations to their advantage and selective enforcement than being truly "by the book, all the time." If your chain of command is "on the same page" you can get away with a heck of a lot of abuse. Thankfully in my experience the good officers and NCO's did outweigh the bad.

In the END, no it doesn't matter, but this isn't the end...it's the beginning. I'd also note that "updated instructions and regs" are rarely, if ever a quick process in the military. They don't normally get updated without exhaustive studies being done...which is exactly what's being done right now on DADT (the study is supposed to present its' findings in December).

I can see and mostly agree with what you're saying, when you put it that way. I still think "just do it already" is an oversimplification. Or to put it another way: Without those "updated regs and instructions" we've already talked about, and without at least a semblance of a plan for keeping order in the barracks, trying to "fast track" the transition willy-nilly is going to make it more painful than it needs to be.

That's the upside, but as they say, "ignorance is bliss." Factor that in with a sprinkling of plausible deniability and the more homophobic soldiers can wrap themselves in the delusion that nobody around them in the showers is gay. Kind of like folks that seem to have the mentality that you're not really "ill" until a doctor tells you you're ill, so if you don't go to the doctor you can never get a serious illness. Still, you have a point in that when I was in, there were a few soldiers that were suspected of being homosexual, but generally as long as they did their job well nobody pressed the issue. If they didn't? Well...life got extra-hard for them with a quickness. Even more so than the run-of-the-mill "dirtbags."

Admittedly, most of my service was in a (mostly) peacetime Army, and there's likely been plenty of cultural upheaval within the military since then on account of the two wars we've been fighting in the interim. I'd like to think that the majority of soldiers are professionals who aren't going to care that much if the person they're on patrol with is gay, so long as they can shoot straight when the enemy starts taking potshots at them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_771035.html

Exactly the reason I thought.

Was just going to post that myself. Just because he doesn't like a law doesn't mean his administration can choose not to enforce it.

Bingo. He is making a hard choice because he accepted the responsiblity of being the President. The federal government doesn't (and shouldn't) want the judiciary deciding military policy. That is the domain of Congress (even if they suck at it). He is protecting their responsibilities.

If only they would live up to them.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39821451...decision_2010/

Pretty much describes how I'm feeling.

this is fucking bullshit, and Obama is a spineless coward. So he doesn't want to do it this way. SO WHAT. It's an evil thing, and he had the power to destroy it, by not appealing. I'll probably end up voting for him, but with extreme reluctance, and no way in hell am I campaigning for him. This pretty much confirms what I've suspected, which is that he really doesn't give a shit about gay rights, and gives lip service to it just so he can be seen as the tolerant alternative to the Republicans. He hasn't lost my vote, but he's lost my potential donation money.

So what happens when the next Republican president gets in and we get the Christian version of this tune? Maybe a right-wing judicial ruling that completely undermines separation of church and state? Do you want Obama to be the president that set the precedent for executive overreach in those circumstances?

DADT sucks. Big-time. But part of being better than the Republicans and their ilk is being willing to play by the rules of the land, and not bending or breaking them in order to get what you want. I believe Obama when he says that DADT will end on his watch - you can choose not to, that's your prerogative.

Here's a quick read that sort of lays out the problem Obama has gotten himself into by tacking to the middle road on this one:

http://www.economist.com/node/172517...ry_id=17251746

"At least we're not Republicans" didn't work in 2004. Why should it work now?

Because as terrifying as it may be the people masquerading as Republicans this time out make George Bush look like a statesman.

Sadly, about half of the American voting body is too short-sighted to care. They just know that they/their family/their neighbor is out of work, and it doesn't look like President Obama has done anything to help them (and even the things that purportedly -would- help them...Health Care Reform, for example...mostly don't kick in for several more years (that is, of course, assuming that these people aren't so idiotic as to believe the "Health Care Reform = Nazi Germany" arguments of Glenn Beck and Co. Obama's been President for two years now, so these folks don't buy the very valid comments that the economy tanked under Bush, or that it was Bush that levied the first "Stimulus package."

Most people have no concept of the long-term, or how when the economy fucks up as bad as it fucked up that it actually takes years to recover no matter WHAT a sitting President does. They expect immediate relief, and when they don't get it, it's the folks that are in office that get the boot.

I'm just glad that more recent polls are showing things are closer to "even" than thought, because for a while there the media was making it out like it was going to be a Republican/Tea Party landslide.

I know about those mouthbreathers. I'm talking about the growing number of seemingly intelligent people like posters here on CHUD who are now talking about not voting/not supporting Obama because he's not changed the country in the span of two years. They should know better.

...but Andrew don't you understand, those peoples votes are like jewelled, precious snowflakes, diamond-studded idealistic chastity belts that are loosened for only the purest and most unsullied of politicians.

I can appreciate the sentiment - I'm absolutely livid about the man I voted for this year giving the Tories a leg-up into power, for example - but under these circumstances you absolutely HAVE to be pragmatic about the options on the table. As JuddL said, this isn't "lesser of two evils", it's "flawed but trying to do right" versus "Book of Revelation".

Bullshit. It's never a good time to correct a wrong. If it wasn't the current set of problems facing this country, then it would be a different set. The Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1957, 1964 and 1968 all were enacted during periods of strife for the US. Didn't stop them from getting passed.

These are changes near and dear to me as a gay American and it is certainly well within my right to vote for a candidate that will do more than play lip service to my causes (or withdraw support from a candidate).

Plenty can happen in the next 2 years. I can guarantee that I'll be paying close attention to his leadership as well as the legislative leadership.

Go for it. Cut your nose off to spite your face. Because as halfhearted as you may feel Obama's approach has been, I can guarantee you that he cares a lot more about your rights and freedoms, and has pledged to do a lot more, than any of the alternatives on the table. Obama has outright said that DADT will end on his watch. He's said it multiple times and repeated it over the past week. Who else with the potential means to do so has made such a pledge, exactly?

It might also be worth thinking about the others that may be affected by a potential Republican victory. Having issues that are close to your heart is perfectly reasonable and understandable, but voting - or not voting - entirely selfishly is essentially what the Right has relied on for years and years.

I'm not sure what the civil rights acts have to do with this. We're talking about Obama promising to repeal a law that, due to precedent, his justice department must currently attempt to protect. As I said, he has openly, unequivocably stated that he will see this law ended. Just not this way, which would set a dangerous precedent for future presidents to interject themselves when the decision in question may be less morally justifiable.

First, I did say he's got 2 more years. I haven't decided....yet.

Second, the Democratic controlled Congress has had 2 years to make this change the correct way (through legislature). Hence the Civil Rights Act comparison. Obama can't repeal the law. Congress has to repeal the law (or it be ruled unconstitutional by the court system, or ultimately by the Supreme Court). Where Obama has failed (in my eyes) is influencing the legislature to do it's job (which is his job).

As far as this statement: How is this a dangerous precedent to let the judicial branch decide on the constitutionality of a law? That's how our system works. PLENTY of judicial decisions have changed the course of American law. If the legislature can't do it, then by all means let the judicial branch do it's job.

The "dangerous precedent" is allowing a judicial ruling to go unchallenged simply because the sitting president happens to agree with its position. These checks and balances are there for a reason.