UPDATE: Here’s video of Jason’s interview with the senator.

Jason Bellini reports that Sen. Kirsten Gillebrand is scheduling Senate hearings to review Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

After determining she didn’t have enough votes in support of a temporary suspension of the ban on gays in the military, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tells The Daily Beast she has secured the commitment of Senate Armed Services Committee to hold hearings on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” this fall. It would be the first formal re-assessment of the policy since Congress passed it into law in 1993.

A statement from the Gillibrand’s office, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, notes that “265 men and women have been unfairly dismissed from the Armed Forces since President Barack Obama took office.”

Gillibrand’s fast-track proposal for halting DADT, an amendment to the Military Reauthorization Act that would have ordered the Defense secretary to stop investigating gay service members, was never introduced. Even with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressing his support, Gillibrand couldn’t gather the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, according to a spokesperson.

“I thought it was a long shot from the very beginning,” says Aubrey Sarvis, executive director the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization fighting for the end of DADT. “Clearly one of the positive things that came out of the Gillibrand amendment was that it served as a catalyst for hearings,” he added.

The House, where repeal has an easier path to passage, held hearings last year. One can only hope that the doyenne of discrimination, Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness will make a stellar appearance on the Hill this time around in support of DADT. This WaPo review of Elaine’s embarrassing performance on the Hill last year only scratches the surface of her untethered-from-reality statements she made. We can look forward to moments like this:

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of “transgenders in the military.” She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading “HIV positivity” through the ranks.

“We’re talking about real consequences for real people,” Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about “inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community,” the prospects of “forcible sodomy” and “exotic forms of sexual expression,” and the case of “a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault” a fellow soldier.

At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.

……”Like a woman who is stared at, her breasts are stared at,” Donnelly explained. She further explained the “absolutely devastating” effect of homosexuals “introducing erotic factors” and made a comparison to Sen. Larry Craig’s adventure at the Minneapolis airport. She said admitting gays to the military would be “forced cohabitation” and a policy of “relax and enjoy it.”

There was also an audible burst of laughter when Donnelly mentioned the “San Francisco left” and when she expressed her concern over gay men sharing a “cramped submarine” with other soldiers.

Donnelly, btw, has never served in the military, and admits she has no qualifications or expertise on sexuality.

Doyenne of discrimination Donnelly claimed in 2008 that members of The Homosexual Agenda somehow coerced former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John M. Shalikashvili (who suffered a stroke more than two years ago), into supporting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which he declared in a NYT op ed. Any rethinking of his position must, in Donnelly’s eyes, have been a result of a sinister fag-dyke mind-control effort out there. Look at this flaming crap:

Donnelly notes that Shalikashvili has in the last year or so suffered a debilitating stroke and is, in her words, “struggling to retain his health.” She says it is “really sad” to see someone like the general being used by the homosexual propaganda machine as “the latest tool of a public relations campaign.”

Related:

* The Blend Elaine Donnelly files