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It just goes from bad to worse inside the Beltway when it comes to drop-kicking the LGBT community by this Administration. It’s one thing for bloggers to call out the biased and homophobic defense of DADT in court by the DOJ, but when I read this piece by Chris Johnson at DC Agenda, “Gay advocates assail Obama’s Justice Department,” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Pro-repeal advocates like Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center and Nathaniel Frank, a senior fellow at Palm, both respected voices on open service in the military (and friends of the Blend) are charging that the zeal by the DOJ to defend preventing gays and lesbians from serving in the mililtary has clearly, to put it charitably, “overcompensated” to the nth degree. The Justice Department named Belkin and Frank as because of their depositions in the case of Log Cabin v. United States. Frank:
“The way they portrayed me is preposterous and I’m not sure that any person in good faith hearing what I had to say could conclude what the [Department of Justice] concluded in their [request for] summary judgment,” he said. “I specifically said having a concern about privacy is not irrational, but using that privacy concern as an argument for the need to ban gays is irrational.”
Belkin:
“They completely misrepresented my statement in the deposition. They were not being truthful about my statement because they said that I claimed that there is a rational basis for the privacy arguments, and I claimed no such thing.”
Wow. Are we in Bizarroland where President Obama has a Justice Department led by Alberto Gonzales? And if you think that’s an overstatement, why is the Obama DOJ operating like an arm of Elaine Donnelly’s Center for Military Readiness?
Frank also took issue with the Justice Department’s repeated references to experts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with the use of quotation marks.For example, the brief says in a footnote that “LCR’s ‘experts’ ultimately seek to challenge the wisdom of the DADT policy, a challenge that is irrelevant under rational basis review.”
Frank said the repeated reference to experts in quotation marks is “highly unusual” for the Justice Department and “may have gone too far.”
“That’s a favorite tactic of the religious right to polish their anti-intellectual credentials, and make it seem like there’s no such things as a homosexual, so they’ll put homosexual in quotes,” he said.
It should surprise no one that they couldn’t find a live body at the DOJ to respond to Frank’s and Belkin’s charges that their remarks were out of context or misrepresented.
Surf over and read the rest. It will give you agita about this administration. Obama apologists on LGBT issues — there’s no excuse for this.
Joe Sudbay has more.
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I find it intriguing….
…that the Obama, Inc., shill quoted in the sourced article quotes Obama as believing DADT “weakens national security”…something he stated at the White House Tea for The Gays last June.
In the short time we have left before DADT repeal dies from running out of oxygen before midterms, perhaps that’s the sole issue we should be focusing on, and all of our messaging, in every form, from blog entries to protest signs should read:
STOP WEAKING NATIONAL SECURITY, MR. PRESIDENT!
REPEAL DON’T ASK DON’T TELL NOW!
Maybe then nongay American’s would start to genuinely care about repeal rather than just saying nice things to pollsters.
And, again, can someone please tell me where the full-page newspaper ads all across the country explaining how repeal benefits all Americans paid for by our rich national groups are?
maybe they’re trying to throw the gameIt’s the only charitable excuse I can think of, that they’d stoop to malpractice for some devious way of getting DADT overturned.
Shabby legal work, either way.
Oh, Mon Cher!
You’ve either been watching too many fictional TV shows about noble lawyers or not paying that much attention to the Obama Nostra’s gift for incompetence.
If they’d wanted to slyly botch it to benefit overturning the ban, all they’d had to do is …oooops…miss some filing deadline. [They let the filing deadline pass to appeal the 9th Circuit's 2008 favorable ruling in the Witt DADT case to the Supremes; then said they'd attack it when it went back to the District court this September; then Gates announced he'd be announcing ways to honor it in 45 days; then silence.] As is, if I were John McShame, I’d be rubbing this language about showers, et al., in their faces at the next repeal hearing.
But instead, even after the flood of bad gay AND mainstream press over their heinous DOMA brief last year [which, unfortunately, obscured the fact that a pretty heinous brief in its own right re DADT had been issued by the odious ODOJ a few days before], they’ve done it again, adding what appears to be some form of malpractice [?] one would think could result in court sanctions [were it not the virtually untouchable federal government....or have I been watching too many lawyer dramas?].
First, we learned they had went out of their way to saturate the brief with arguably outdated quotes by homophobic, unindicted war criminal Powell. Now we learn they have damaged the credibility of the two most tireless and eloquent opponents to the ban. I no more believe Belkin and Frank were accurately quoted than I believe Judy Garland will be singing Easter Parade at the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday. [Though given her huge gay following, and THEIR ignorance, there's probably an invitation in the dead person's dead letter box somewhere.]
Bottomline: they don’t actually give a rat politician’s ass for LGBT rights. If they did, they would not continue to make homophobic arguments in favor of these laws that aren’t just read by the court but by Congress and the formal Antigay Industry. “Re[eal? But, Mr. President, your DOJ just said….”
Look for some forthcoming statement from Jon Davidson, Legal Director of Lambda Legal similar to what he said about that first DOMA brief:
If there were a moral Three Strikes law applicable to the DOJ, Obamaite Tony West and his fellow legal Munchkins would be the ones worrying about dropping the soap in another showers scenario.
Support for the ‘national security’ interests of oil companies and the merchants of death is inexcusable.
Beware of propagandists for the Pentagon and their appeals to protect ‘our’ national security. Instead, ask yourself who’s talking about ‘national security’ and the joys of enlisting in the military machine and why. Keep in mind Malcolm X’s adage “A man who dangles worms in the water is not necessarily a friend to the fish.” Who benefits from these flag waving appeals? Certainly not working people or the GLBT communities. We have zero interests in the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only beneficiaries of these imperial wars are oil companies and merchants of death like Cheney’s Haliburton.
Few are clueless enough to be fooled the ‘patriotic’ appeals of B. Clinton, Bush and Obama to protect us from ‘terrorism’. People are aware that the worst terrorists are in the White House, Congress and the Pentagon. Their wars endanger us all.
The military brass is not in the business of protecting US citizens.
If they wanted to protect us they’d invade and occupy the offices of insurance companies and HMOs and arrest those responsible for murder of US citizens by denying them good health care. But they won’t.
They could invade clerical offices and housing all over the country to arrest child rapists and buffoon televangelists who call for violence against the LGBT communities. But they won’t.
They could force pharmaceuticals to charge not for profit prices. But they won’t.
They might send in troops to arrest those trying to enforce foreclosures. They could open empty bases to the homeless and provide food and medical care. But they won’t.
They should use troops to support strikers including strikes by immigrant and imported workers. Pointing the barrel of a tank at management offices and asking them to pay decent wages would have stirring effect on the welfare of working people. But it’ll never happen with Democrat/Republicans in office.
They do us all a favor by arresting those in the looter class who, after Clinton repealed deregulation, stole trillions from working people. But they won’t.
There’s not a chance in hell that any Democrat or Republican would agree to those measures under any circumstances because without exception they’re lap dogs of the looter class. Shills for Democrats, Republicans or the Pentagon range from the merely fatuous to clowns like Limbaugh.
It’s not about ‘national security”. It’s all about, and only about, stealing oil.
The B. Clinton, Bush, and Obama invasions and occupations to protect the ‘national security’ of Texaco and War, Inc. are doomed to fail for the same reason LBJ and Nixon’s ‘national security’ motivated invasions and attempted occupations of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia failed.
GIs are once again forming their own antiwar movement and facing down careerists and officers. In Vietnam that ended the fighting effectiveness of US forces and forced Nixon to withdraw them to prevent wider mutinies. The global civilian antiwar movement, for all its ups and downs obstinately continues to grow. The tenacious struggle by Iraqi oil workers to prevent the piracy of their oil by the US military brass will be the decisive factor in Iraq.
Until then the Pentagons ‘national security’ propaganda will continue to kill and maim GI’s, drive them to mass suicide and murder civilians from Palestine to Pakistan. It endangers GIs and GLBT folks in Iraq being murdered in huge numbers by US trained and equipped jihadist sunni police and shiite militias.
“why is the Obama DOJ operating like an arm of Elaine Donnelly’s Center for Military Readiness? “Because that’s what they are. And they’re really, really fierce advocates for it.
Good newsI like all the posts of this website and really appreciate all the authors for their work.
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Here’s what ‘National Security” really means. http://www.youtube.com/watch?f…
It’s the video obtained by Reuters under the Freedom of Information Act of the murder of reporters, several civilians and two children in Iraq, similar to dozens of events in Afghanistan and Pakistan since Obama’s escalation began.
The radio ‘noise’ at the beginning is deliberate.