Kerry Eleveld at the Advocate has posted a new piece, DADT: Signs of Hope, Doom, where in she describe backroom negotiations are already underway to ditch the effort to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the lame duck legislative session:

Over the weekend, observers of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” debate began cautiously acknowledging that an effort is in the works to potentially move a stripped down version of the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act that would exclude repeal.

A person close to the process said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is looking into a deal with Sec. Gates that would cut ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ out of the Defense bill in order to smooth its way to passage.

“Levin is making calls under the premise – we can’t afford to waste time on a controversial provision, so we’ll strip out the controversial provision and be able to get the bill on and off the floor in the available amount of time,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network responds:

“We welcome Secretary Gates call for the senate to act on repeal in the lame duck session. Indeed, the senate should call up the defense bill reported out of committee and pass it before it goes home for the year,” Sarvis said. “Any talk about a watered down defense bill, whereby the ‘Don’t Ask’ revisions would be stripped out, is unacceptable and offensive to the gay and lesbian service members who risk their lives everyday.”

This is pretty much the fat lady singing folks. Democrats are preparing to abandon the fight. We will see them, once again, as they did on LGBT initiatives in healthcare reform, as they did when they passed DADT and DOMA, and Bill Clinton signed them, they take a big crap on us, then come to us and say, “Well, what else could we do? We had to.”

Don’t you believe it. You tell them, “You could have fought for it.”