From the Archives: World War II veteran Franklin Kameny remembers his experience with 'don't ask, don't tell'

World War II veteran Franklin Kameny remembers his experience with 'don't ask, don't tell'
May 30, 2010 2:49 PM MST

The confluence of the vote in the House of Representatives to repeal the law known colloquially as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) and Memorial Day weekend may not seem to be much more than a coincidence.

For many people, especially those born in the last decade of the 20th century, the idea of ending the ban on openly gay and lesbian Americans serving in the armed forces may seem to be a new one. Even older Americans may not have become aware of the issue any earlier than 1993, when Bill Clinton tried to end the ban but ended up signing the law that made it permanent.

The fact is, not only the ban but attempts to end it go back much farther than the early 1990s.

On May 5, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner interviewed Franklin Kameny, one of the pioneers of the modern gay rights movement, at the National Press Club in Washington.

Kameny, who celebrated his 85th birthday on May 21, cautioned, first, that we must “keep in mind” that the gay ban “became statutory law in ’93 [but] has been military policy for very, very, very much longer than that. You can arguably bring it all the way back to 1778 and George Washington.”

‘They Asked; I Didn’t Tell’
Kameny encountered the gay ban for the first time during World War II, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

“I personally ran into [the ban] on May 18, 1943, when a few days before my 18th birthday, I enlisted in the Army at the height of World War II,” Kameny said. “They asked; I didn’t tell, even though as a healthy, vigorous teenager there were things to tell. (Not terribly much, it was a different era in all kinds of ways.)”

Kameny added: “I have resented for 67 years that I had to lie in order to serve in a war effort that I strongly supported. I did serve and I saw combat in Europe.”

In 1957, Kameny – a Harvard-educated physicist and astronomer – was fired from his job with the Army Mapping Service because he was gay. He spent the next several decades in temporary jobs because he was unable to get a security clearance to do what he was trained to do. In fact, he said, there were some months when had only 20 cents to spend per day on food. (The story of Kameny's life during this period is told well by historian David K. Johnson in his 2004 book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.)

Marching on the Pentagon
By 1961, however, he began to get involved in the then-fledgling gay rights movement. One of the first issues he and his colleagues tackled was the military gay ban.

“We picketed against it starting in ’65 both in front of the White House and at the Pentagon, and at the Pentagon again in ’66,” demonstrating, he said, “specifically against the exclusionary policy.”

Congressional Campaign
The issue also came up in 1971, when Kameny was the first openly gay person to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. (He ran for position of Delegate from the District of Columbia, a slot now filled by Eleanor Holmes Norton.)

“In the course of all that, I was campaigning on two different fronts,” Kameny explained. “One was purely on District issues; if you’re going to run for Congress in the District [of Columbia] you have to be an expert on trash collection and everything else.

“But also,” he continued, he was running “as a gay activist,” so that in the later part of the campaign, he held “a press conference in or near the office of the Secretary of the Army, and I met with him or somebody in his staff ... in connection with the gay ban.”

Two decades later, “in ’93, it became law, which completely changed the politics entirely.”

That politics will play out this summer when the U.S. Senate takes up the issue and will decide whether to follow the course set by the House or to let the gay ban linger for another year or longer.



Publisher's note: Today is the traditional date of Memorial Day, as it began in the years after the Civil War and was commemorated until the late 1960s, when it was moved to the last Monday in May.

This article is drawn from my Examiner.com archives. It was originally published on Examiner.com on May 30, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Author David Lampo brings gay-rights message to conservative Republicans

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on June 13, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Author David Lampo brings gay-rights message to conservative Republicans

David Lampo, a longtime activist with the Virginia chapter of Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and publications director at the libertarian Cato Institute, is author of a new book, A Fundamental Freedom: Why Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights, scheduled to be released on June 16 by Rowman & Littlefield.

Lampo spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the book at the 2012 Capital Pride festival on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where he was promoting the book at the LCR information table.

He describes his book, A Fundamental Freedom, as “a primer about gay rights for Republicans [and] all right-of-center voters.”

GOP’s ‘bad reputation’
The Republican party, he explained, “has a bad reputation regarding gay rights and I thought it was time that somebody try to explain the concept and the philosophy behind [gay issues] from someone who shares their basic, fundamental political values.”

He felt it was important that “rather than liberals or leftists preaching at them about gay rights from the Left, I thought that somebody on the Right, specifically [someone] with a libertarian perspective, should address the issue with them.”

As might be expected, given the subtitle, the book is “primarily about gay issues, mostly at the federal level,” Lampo noted, as well as “the constitutional issues involved with the Tenth Amendment, DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], a federal marriage amendment, and issues like that.”

The author explained that he was “inspired to write” A Fundamental Freedom last year, “at the beginning of the Republican presidential nomination process, because a lot of the comments and policies advocated by most of the candidates were so outrageous -- yet they rarely got any kickback from more mainstream or socially tolerant Republicans.”


Endless material
Lampo said that he “just got tired of the lack of a response to the most radical statements from people like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.”

Although there was, he said, “a never-ending amount of material coming out of the presidential nominating process,” he finished writing the book last fall before taking it to a publisher.

Lampo pointed out that some of the contestants for the GOP presidential nomination were more supportive on gay-rights issues than others, including former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

In those cases, he said, “I usually contrast their positions with what most of the candidates said and did.”

The book’s last chapter, he explained, includes a “score card of all the major Republican candidates,” giving each a grade on a scale of A to F.

“Of course,” he noted, Huntsman and Johnson “and even Ron Paul do pretty well, but most of the others [received] Fs.”

DADT and libertarians
If one were to look for supportive Republicans on gay-rights issues, Lampo recommended going first to the Republicans in Congress who voted to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy of excluding openly gay members of the armed forces.

There were eight GOP Senators who voted to repeal DADT, including Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Richard Burr of North Carolina. Five Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for repeal: Judy Biggert of Illinois, Anh Cao of Louisiana, Charles Djou of Hawaii, Ron Paul of Texas, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

“It was their votes that actually got it repealed,” Lampo asserted.

More generally, gay-supportive Republicans can be found “in the more libertarian wing of the party,” he said. Those are the people “who are going to have to lead on it and, in fact, have led.”

LCR and GOProud
The role of gay political groups like Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud can also not be discounted, he said.

“It’s self-evident that they’re the two main groups that have brought these issues to the attention of mainstream Republicans and conservative Republicans,” Lampo explained.

“I think their influence on” the Republican National Committee and on “Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been pretty remarkable given the history of the party on gay rights,” he concluded.

David Lampo will be the featured guest at a book-launch party for A Fundamental Freedom in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday evening, June 15.

Alaska, Huge Ships, and DADT?

On The Tonight Show tonight, Jimmy Fallon did a comedy bit involving books with odd titles or subjects.

One of the books he featured was John B. Thompson's Alaska as It Used to Was, which was chosen, no doubt, for its grammatically-challenged title.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Alaska as It Used to Was on Amazon.com. Nothing stood out until I scrolled down to "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed." That caught my eye because there were only two items listed, neither of which seems to have any connection to Alaska as It Used to Was, nor to each other.

See?

The two books are How to Avoid Huge Ships by John W. Trimmer and Soldier of Change: From the Closet to the Forefront of the Gay Rights Movement by Stephen Snyder-Hill.

Big boats?  Gay soldiers?  Alaska's past?  Two of these things are not like the others.

In the comments section below, I will entertain suggestions about what the relationship among these three books might be.  There must be some connection, but it escapes me.

My 1991 Interview with Geraldine Ferraro

Hank Stuever's review in Friday's Washington Post of a new Showtime documentary about 1984 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro reminded me that I once interviewed her.

Rick Sincere interviews Geraldine Ferraro, 1991

The occasion was a Human Rights Campaign Fund (now Human Rights Campaign) fundraising dinner in late 1991. I was a correpondent for Gay Fairfax, a local TV magazine show in Northern Virginia that also appeared on various public-access cable channels around the country. The interview, which was cut away from excerpts of Ferraro's speech that night, was broadcast months later, on February 10, 1992.

At the time, Ferraro was embarking on a campaign to unseat then-Senator Alfonse D'Amato in New York. D'Amato was a Republican who had first been elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

As John Peter Olinger later noted about Ferraro's appearance at the HRCF banquet in an undated paper for the Rainbow History Project, "It was striking to watch as the crowd at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in 1992 [sic] cheered wildly as Geraldine Ferraro said she was running against Senator D’Amato and to realize that just six years later that same organization endorsed Senator D’Amato’s re-election."

As it turns out, the former congresswoman did not even win the Democratic primary to face D'Amato in November. She lost that election to New York attorney general Robert Abrams in a crowded field that also included pre-MSNBC Al Sharpton, New York City comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, and U.S. Representative Robert Mrazek.

My interview was rather short (although, if you watch closely, you can see that some of it must have ended up on the cutting-room floor).  Note the references to Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense for President George H.W. Bush, and the military gay ban, which a little over two years later would become Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, with repeal two decades in the future.

Ferraro also refers to "the gay rights act," which I interpret to mean ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, another bill that has been in Congress for decades without being passed into law.

The first question I posed mentioned a book Ferraro was working on.  She notes that she had deferred finishing it while running for the Senate, but a search on Amazon.com reveals that no book by Ferraro on that topic -- tensions between the First and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution --  was ever published.

Here is a complete transcript, including introductions by Gay Fairfax anchors Beth Goodman and Dave Hughes.

Beth Goodman: Gay Fairfax correspondent Rick Sincere recently got an exclusive interview from Geraldine Ferraro at the 1991 Human Rights Campaign Fund banquet.

Dave Hughes: Miss Ferraro ran for the United States Senate in New York State. Rick asked her about her views on gay and lesbian issues.

Rick Sincere: Welcome to Gay Fairfax.

Geraldine Ferraro: Thank you.

Sincere: And welcome to the Human Rights Campaign Fund annual dinner.

One of the questions I'd like to ask you is about the book you're working on about the conflict between the First Amendment and privacy rights. Could you comment on how that relates to the question of outing and ...

Ferraro: It doesn't. It doesn't. What it is is it's a book on the tension between the first and sixth amendments. The sixth amendment is the right to a fair trial. I'm a former prosecutor and so out of my experiences over the last number of years, I've sat down and really tried to analyze how much of an impact a good deal of publicity has on a person's right to have a fair trial. But to be very honest, I'm not really writing the book anymore. I've put it aside; I'm now running for the United States Senate. That preoccupies all of my time so the book will be put on the back burner for another day. Perhaps after I'm in the Senate a couple of terms.

Sincere: Right. Give it another twelve years or so, you can get back to it. Tell us about your relationship to the gay and lesbian rights movement. You've been a long term, long-time supporter of gay rights and here you are the Human Rights Campaign Fund dinner. What do you think is top on the agenda for the gay and lesbian community?

Ferraro: Well, I think the issue of funding for AIDS research into to move along i think that's probably most immediate problem, I mean there are obviously others, the immigration laws, the gay rights act which is in the Senate and in the House, I'd like to see that moved.

But again, I think, evidently funding and finding a cure for a disease that is just destroying this nation.

Sincere: What do you think about the problem of the military's discrimination against gay men and lesbians? Do you think there's hope for movement in that direction?

Ferraro: I sure hope so. I think Secretary Cheney has a very good opportunity to make some significant rules on the issue now especially in light of the report that just came out that indicates that gays and lesbians have no impact on security, no problem with security. Take a look at what happened during Desert Storm, the number of people who served and served valiantly who are gays and lesbians.

I know Dick Cheney. He was in my class in the Congress. I think he is an honorable man, and I would hope that he would be also a man of conscience and would take a very close look at what's happening in the military.

We're facing some very, very tough times and we need the talents of all of our people. We shouldn't discriminate because of race or gender or sexual orientation or anything else, or religion. So I look forward to being able to talk a little bit tonight about the issue, and I look forward to being able to come down in the Senate and doing something about it.

You can watch Ferraro's speech, my interview, and a musical performance by an a capella group, The Flirtations, here on Gay Fairfax:

Ferraro passed away in 2011 at the age of 75. The new Showtime movie about her is called Geraldine Ferraro: Paving the Way. It is directed by her daughter, Donna Zaccaro.

Social Media Mischief at The Washington Times?

The Washington Times has an article on its web site about Thursday's Capitol Hill hearing on Don't Ask Don't Tell, the now-repealed policy that prohibits the service of open and honest gay and lesbian Americans in the military.

The headline and subhead read:

Services OK with ending ‘don’t ask’
No ‘push-back,’ brass reports to Capitol Hill

The first paragraph says:

Preparations for repealing the military’s ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

If you click to share the story on Facebook, however, the headline reads:

Lawmaker skeptical of repeal of 'don't ask' - Washington Times

And the excerpted first paragraph, designed to appear on Facebook's feed, says:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said on Thursday that he is troubled by the rushed way the Obama administration is moving to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military.

Similarly, if you click to share on Twitter, you get this retweet:

RT @washtimes Congress skeptical of repeal of military's gay ban - Washington Times http://bit.ly/i1eqHq

However, if you click on a different Twitter icon, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times http://t.co/la0otOW via @AddThis

(Note that the shortened URLs are different in the two different Tweets.)

And if you click on a different Facebook button, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times
Preparations for repealing the military's ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

Confused? I was.

It looks like somebody at the Washington Times -- I don't know who, but it's certainly not the reporter who wrote the story, Shaun Waterman -- is attempting to put a spin on the story through social media that is not borne out by the actual report itself.

I just noticed this by chance.  An important question to ask is, does the Washington Times do this with other articles, or is this a one-off phenomenon?  What are the ethics of changing the headline and the emphasis of a story when spreading it through social media sites?  Is this worthy of criticism?

Your thoughts are welcome in the comments space, below.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 

See my articles on Examiner.com!

DADT in Perspective: Franklin Kameny Looks Back at the Gay Military Ban

Today's long-awaited vote in the U.S. Senate to repeal the policy known colloquially as "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was the culmination of years of effort by gay Americans and their allies who have opposed overt discrimination by the government on the basis of sexual orientation.

The vote was made sweeter by the fact that, in both the House of Representatives earlier this week and the Senate today, the vote was truly bipartisan. In the House, for instance, prominent Republicans such as the ranking member (and incoming chair) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) voted for repeal, as did Ron Paul of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona. In the Senate, the newest GOP member, Mark Kirk of Illinois, joined with Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and several other Republican colleagues to overturn the ban on openly gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Franklin Kameny in Washington on May 5, 2010

For many people, especially those born in the last decade of the 20th century, the idea of ending the ban on openly gay and lesbian Americans serving in the armed forces may seem to be a new one. Even older Americans may not have become aware of the issue any earlier than 1993, when Bill Clinton tried to end the ban but ended up signing the law that made it permanent.

The fact is, not only the ban but attempts to end it go back much farther than the early 1990s.

On May 5, I interviewed Franklin Kameny, one of the pioneers of the modern gay rights movement, at the National Press Club in Washington.

Kameny, who celebrated his 85th birthday on May 21, cautioned, first, that we must “keep in mind” that the gay ban “became statutory law in ’93 [but] has been military policy for very, very, very much longer than that. You can arguably bring it all the way back to 1778 and George Washington.”

Kameny encountered the gay ban for the first time during World War II, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

“I personally ran into [the ban] on May 18, 1943, when a few days before my 18th birthday, I enlisted in the Army at the height of World War II,” Kameny said. “They asked; I didn’t tell, even though as a healthy, vigorous teenager there were things to tell. (Not terribly much, it was a different era in all kinds of ways.)”

Kameny added: “I have resented for 67 years that I had to lie in order to serve in a war effort that I strongly supported. I did serve and I saw combat in Europe.”

In 1957, Kameny – a Harvard-educated physicist and astronomer – was fired from his job with the Army Mapping Service because he was gay. He spent the next several decades in temporary jobs because he was unable to get a security clearance to do what he was trained to do. In fact, he said, there were some months when had only 20 cents to spend per day on food. (The story of Kameny's life during this period is told well by historian David K. Johnson in his 2004 book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.)

By 1961, however, he began to get involved in the then-fledgling gay rights movement, founding the Washington chapter of the Mattachine Society and setting the stage for pre-Stonewall activism.

One of the first issues he and his colleagues tackled was the military gay ban.

“We picketed against it starting in ’65 both in front of the White House and at the Pentagon, and at the Pentagon again in ’66,” demonstrating, he said, “specifically against the exclusionary policy.”

The issue also came up in 1971, when Kameny was the first openly gay person to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. (He ran for position of Delegate from the District of Columbia, a slot now filled by Eleanor Holmes Norton.)

“In the course of all that, I was campaigning on two different fronts,” Kameny explained. “One was purely on District issues; if you’re going to run for Congress in the District [of Columbia] you have to be an expert on trash collection and everything else.

“But also,” he continued, he was running “as a gay activist,” so that in the later part of the campaign, he held “a press conference in or near the office of the Secretary of the Army, and I met with him or somebody in his staff ... in connection with the gay ban.”

Two decades later, “in ’93, it became law, which completely changed the politics entirely.”

Now, 17 years after the Clinton-era policy was instituted, the politics have changed again, by 180 degrees.  Bipartisan majorities in both chambers of the national legislature, following the majorities indicated by public-opinion polls among U.S. voters, have decided the anti-gay policy must be rejected.  The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both argued in favor of repealing DADT, as the policy has come to be known.  The President has promised to sign the bill.

I am confident that the vast majority of members of our armed services are mature enough to treat this change in personnel policy with integrity and professionalism.  Defenders of DADT have for years shown a poor opinion of enlisted men and women, in particular, asserting that they would be unable to work side-by-side with openly gay comrades because of inchoate prejudice. 

A post-DADT military will prove them wrong, just as the naysayers were proven wrong after President Truman ordered the end to racial segregation in the military.

Credit is due to the many gay and lesbian veterans who worked hard to see this legislation get passed.  Not least of those are the World War II veterans like Frank Kameny who easily could have chosen to do something else with their time besides lobbying Congress.  Today is a great day for America.

(This article is adapted from an earlier piece published on Examiner.com on May 30, 2010.)

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 

See my articles on Examiner.com!

 

An Interview with GayPatriot Blogger B. Daniel Blatt

University of Virginia law school alumnus B. Daniel Blatt blogs at the prominent and widely-read political web site, GayPatriot, which has had more than 3.6 million visitors since September 4, 2004.

Based in Los Angeles, Blatt is known as “GayPatriotWest” to distinguish him from East Coast co-blogger Bruce Carroll (“GayPatriot”).

GayPatriot has tried to be the focal point of conservative views from a gay perspective (and has largely succeeded in that task). As Blatt put it, the blog has proved to have “a potential to explain the gay experience to conservatives, and conservative ideas to gay people.”

I have known Dan Blatt for about two decades, dating at least to the time he worked for one of my opponents in my first race for the Virginia House of Delegates. (Needless to say, there are no hard feelings remaining from that 1991 special election.) He was one of the founders of the Log Cabin Republican Club of Northern Virginia, and I succeeded him as a member of the Arlington County Arts Commission when he moved to California in 1999. I only held that position for a few months before pulling up stakes myself and moving to Charlottesville later that year.

Now in the middle of a multi-city, cross-country trip, Blatt stopped in Charlottesville during Memorial Day weekend and I interviewed him over eggs and toast at the popular brunch spot, The Tavern (“where students, tourists, and townspeople meet”).

When he began blogging in October 2004 – just two months before I started this blog -- Blatt’s expectations and goals were inchoate. Referencing Tolkien’s remark about The Lord of the Rings, “the tale grew in the telling,” Blatt says about his blogging that “the expectations and goals grew in the blogging.”

Much of the satisfaction of blogging at GayPatriot comes from the reactions of readers, and emails Blatt receives from them. He identifies three types of “heartening” emails.

“The first,” he says, “are from gay conservatives that say, ‘Wow, this is what I’ve always thought and I’ve never found a voice in the gay community because it’s kind of an enforced police system -- Orwellian, almost.’

“The second type of emails,” he continues, come “from gay liberals who say, ‘Hey, look, you’re not going to convince me to be a conservative but I do see that you’re not self-hating. I no longer see gay conservatism as an oxymoron. I get where you’re coming from.’”

The third set of emails has been more sporadic, but Blatt occasionally gets them from social conservatives who say that GayPatriot helps them “see that not all gays are radical, looney-tune leftists who want to increase the power of the state and take away our freedoms as individuals.”

Blatt says that he hopes his blog will “promote a greater understanding and to show that the gay movement is not monolithic and that gay people are not monolithic and to show that … liberty is good for gay people,” just as “it’s good for conservatives.”

The blogger adds: “I prefer freedom to equality” and that he tries “to challenge the equality orthodoxy of the gay movement.”

I asked Blatt what he found satisfying about his blogging experience that he did not expect.

He paused to think about this before he answered, “The number of friendships that I would forge -- and I also did not expect that our blog would bring two readers together as a happy couple.”

He explained how this latter accomplishment came about:

“I have two friends whom I met in Los Angeles, [although] they weren’t friends before the blog,” that is, they became friends through the GayPatriot blog.

“These two men,” he continued, “met at an event sponsored by a reader of our blog for [other] blog readers. I had met each of them before and I wanted them to meet each other and now they’re boyfriend and boyfriend.”

Blatt beams when he relates this story. “It makes me feel really great that, while I may not have been a sort of yenta there, I certainly helped facilitate a romance. That’s the most unexpected pleasure” that blogging has brought his way.

I asked, only half-facetiously, if Match.com is an advertiser on GayPatriot. Blatt laughed and said, “You know, we should look into that.”

My next two questions were about the politicians whom Dan Blatt admires. One of those questions were a sort of curveball, but I anticipate using it in future interviews like this one.

When given the choice of naming any politician, living or dead, Blatt does not equivocate when he answers, slowly and deliberately, “Ronald Wilson Reagan.”

Among living politicians, he cites Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.

“Right now, I have a great deal of respect for Tom Coburn,” he says. “I don’t always agree with Coburn. He said some funny things about lesbians in bathrooms during the 2004 campaign. Yet he’s been very, very, very good in trying to gum up the works of Obamacare,” and in “trying to remind Obama that he ran on a net spending cut,” noting also that Coburn “was a good friend of Obama in the Senate.”

Coburn, he says, “has stood firm on principle and he’s fought big government. Now, he’s not perfect. But he has been steadfast in standing up to big government.”

Among those politicians with whom he disagrees on the issues but nonetheless admires, Blatt mentions his home state senator, Dianne Feinstein.

“She always seems to express her disagreement in civil terms and shows respect for conservatives,” he explains. “I think she’s really a decent human being. She’s liberal, but she doesn’t treat conservatives with disdain.”

In recent weeks, Blatt has found himself blogging a lot about two topics. The first is the military gay ban, known more generally as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," or DADT.

“It’s the most important issue on the gay agenda right now,” Blatt says. He sees “an emerging consensus for repeal” and cites a Gallup poll from September 2009 “that showed that 57 percent of conservatives favor repeal.”

The other issue he has focused on is what he calls “the homosexual infiltration of the Tea Parties,” in contrast to the conventional media narrative that the Tea Party movement is rife with racists.

Blatt challenges that conventional narrative.

He argues that “any political movement -- any protest movement -- is going to attract some knuckleheads and cuckooheads. Certainly there are some cuckooheads attracted to the Tea Party just as they were attracted to anti-Bush rallies.”

He adds, emphatically but almost sotto voce, “There was a greater concentration of them in the anti-Bush rallies.”

Blatt asks, “If you’re going to do a media narrative about racism in the Tea Parties, shouldn’t you also talk about homosexual infiltration of the Tea Parties? Because by my estimate, there have been more gay people at Tea Parties than there have been racists.” He ticks off a list of gay people he knows in Washington, Chicago, Charlottesville, and other places who are participants in the Tea Party movement.

The media, he says, are missing this narrative “about gay people participating in Tea Parties.”

From Charlottesville, Blatt headed on to Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta, where he will host a dinner for his blog readers, and eventually to Brattleboro, Vermont, where one of his readers is also hosting a dinner, before returning to California.

NOTE: A slightly different version of this interview was published on May 31 on Examiner.com.

Be sure to visit my CafePress store for gifts and novelty items!
Read my blog on Kindle!
Follow my tweets on Twitter! 
See my articles on Examiner.com!

DADT: Let's Look at the Polling Data

The current issue of C-VILLE Weekly carries a letter from Frederick W. Kahler of Earlysville, who identifies himself as a World War II veteran and Navy pilot.

Mr. Kahler writes:

Cathy Harding: In response to your “Read this First” in the March 17-23 issue, I pose the following, regarding your endorsement of Congressman “MORON’”s campaign to repeal DADT: What branch of the military did “MORON” serve in? What branch of the military did you serve in? Did you ever poll the military to ascertain their feelings about serving side by side with “gays”?

You talk about straining the military as if the repeal of DADT would greatly improve the morale of the “straights” serving.

I’ve got news for you: NO WAY!

Ignoring his undignified references to Representative Jim Moran (D-VA8), who does plenty to undignify himself, let's go directly to the question he poses to C-VILLE's editor about polling the military to find out their attitudes about serving with openly gay comrades.

As a matter of fact, there have already been polls done to find precisely the information that Mr. Kahler desires.

In December 2006, the respected polling organization, Zogby International, surveyed troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. One of its findings was that 73% of military personnel are comfortable with lesbians and gay men. It further found:

Of those in combat units, 21% said they know for certain that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, slightly less than for those in combat support units (25%) and combat service support units (22%). One in five troops (20%) in other units said they know for certain someone is gay or lesbian in their unit. Overall, nearly half (45%) say there are people in their unit they suspect are gay or lesbian, but they don't know for sure. Slightly more than half (52%) say they have received training on the prevention of anti-gay harassment in the past three years. But 40% say they have not received this type of training, which is mandated by Defense Department policy.

Moreover, Zogby said:

Some troops believe the integration of openly gay and lesbian service members in the military could undermine cohesion, but those who know at least one gay peer are less likely to believe it would negatively impact morale. Of those who know a gay or lesbian peer, 27% said it has a negative impact on the morale of their unit. By contrast, among those who do not know of a gay or lesbian person in their unit, or are unsure of their presence, 58% said it would have a negative impact on their unit.

Prominent supporters of "don't ask, don't tell" have expressed concerns about privacy in the shower, Dr. Belkin said, but nearly three out of four troops said in the Zogby poll that they usually or almost always take showers privately [and] only 8% say they usually or almost always take showers in group stalls.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania reported these findings in its 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey:

* 50% of junior enlisted personnel say that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16% in 1992
* 29% of military personnel believe open service is an issue of equal rights.
* Service members surveyed “believe sexual orientation is unrelated to job performance,” Annenberg reported.
* Only 16% of believed lesbian and gay service members were “bad for morale,” while just 12% thought allowing gays to serve openly would be “bad for teamwork.”

If these surveys of active service members are insufficient to satisfy Mr. Kahler's curiosity, perhaps the views of retired military and naval officers would pique his interest.

According to an article at PageOneQ headlined "Admirals, generals call for 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal,"

A coalition of retired military generals and admirals has released a joint call to repeal 10 USC 654, better known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," in order to allow gay and lesbian members of the military to serve openly, without fear of losing one's military career. Over 12,000 people have been discharged under the policy since its inception in 1993.

Among the 104 signatories is retired Admiral Charles Larson, former Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and a supporter of "Don't Ask" when it was signed by President Clinton. At the time, he thought that "Don't Ask" was a good step towards lifting a temporary blanket ban on gays in the military. Larson later saw how "Don't Ask" was being used for "witch hunts," depriving the military of talented individuals, and after working with gay people and speaking at length with his lesbian daughter, he now supports an end to the ban altogether.

"I think the time has come to find a way to let talented, young, patriotic Americans who want to serve their country serve," Larson said, "and let's enforce high standards of personal and human behavior for everyone."

(For the skeptical reader, that article includes a list of the names of all the signatories to the statement calling for DADT repeal. The story was also reported by the Associated Press.)

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) argues that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is unkind to taxpayers while it is unfair to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines:

* The Pentagon has spent over $200 million taxpayer dollars to replace service men and women discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” since 1993, according to a 2005 GAO report.
* A 2006 Blue Ribbon Commission Report found that the total cost of implementing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” between fiscal year 1994 and fiscal year 2003 was at least $363.8 million.

Given that information, it is no wonder that the general public, in multiple surveys spread over several years, has become increasingly opposed to excluding patriotic gay Americans from serving in the armed forces.

For example, a Fox News poll in August 2003 discovered that "64% of those polled support allowing gays to serve openly." In another example, a July 2008 poll by the Washington Post and ABC News found:

• 75% of Americans think homosexuals who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military
• 22% of Americans think homosexuals who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should not be allowed to serve in the military
• 3% had no opinion

Some people might be surprised by these findings. That's why it's useful to do research and to check the data against preconceptions.

Read my blog on Kindle!

The Evolution of Bob Barr

Southern Voice, a gay weekly published by the same company that also publishes the Washington Blade, has a long article about Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and how (and why) his positions on gay issues have changed over the years (hat tip to Austin Cassidy's Independent Political Report).

I have noted in the past how Barr has changed his positions on the military's ban on gay servicemembers and his opposition to a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Southern Voice highlights these issues in its article.

What's most interesting to me is how Barr explains that it was conversations with members of Outright Libertarians, a partisan group of gay libertarians, that helped him refine (and change) his views on issues of importance to gay and lesbian voters. Southern Voice reports:

Bob Barr sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act when he served in Congress as a Republican representing Georgia’s 7th District. Now running for president as a Libertarian, Barr advocates repealing part of the law.

In a June 2 interview with Southern Voice, Barr, who served in Congress from 1995-2003, delineated between two sections of DOMA: a full faith and credit clause that protects the rights of each state to implement its own definition of marriage, and a section that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman under federal law.

“This [second part] was intended to apply to federal programs, such as survivor benefits, Social Security [and others],” he said.

Barr said it is the second part of DOMA he would work to repeal if elected president.

“Over the years and over the last year since I’ve been more active in the Libertarian Party, I’ve talked with a number of individuals, including members of Outright Libertarians [a gay Libertarian group], and have come to view the second part as having been used as a club, or the tail wagging the dog,” Barr said. “It has become in effect a national definition of marriage. This is not what I intended.”

The article continues:

Doyle Jones, a member of Outright Libertarians living in Tucker, plans to vote for Barr for president and said he believes Barr’s reversal on DOMA is “sincere.”

“I think Outright Libertarians have influenced him,” Jones said.

Rob Power, chairperson of Outright Libertarians, said while pleased with Barr’s change of heart on DOMA, he was disappointed to hear Barr wants to repeal only part of the law.

But Power, who lives in San Francisco, does believe Barr has “evolved” on the issue. Barr first talked with Outright Libertarians at last year’s Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev. While Power was not at the conference, he worked with fellow Libertarians on devising a strategy to convince Barr he was wrong on DOMA by stressing to him the law was an attack on federalism, or state’s rights.

After a conversation with current Outright Libertarian secretary Brian Miller at that conference, Barr essentially reversed his position on DOMA, Power said.

While Barr does not yet think gay marriage is a good idea, he is open to both civil unions and permitting gay couples to adopt children:

Barr also told Southern Voice this week he now believes in civil unions and that gay couples deserve legal benefits and rights.

He supports gay people adopting, saying he has seen “plenty of heterosexual people adopt that shouldn’t have.”

Barr shares the position of many libertarians -- including me -- of opposing federal employment non-discrimination laws and hate-crimes laws:

And in line with the Libertarian Party, Barr, a former federal prosecutor, opposes hate crimes legislation, saying such a law “actually makes cases harder to prosecute.”

He also does not support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban job bias based on sexual orientation, again citing the need for less governmental interference.

Barr's biggest break with conservatives may come in his opposition to DADT:

But Barr advocates dumping the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy prohibiting gay service members from serving openly. He said this week the firing of gay Arabic linguists, for example, is a threat to national security.

In a June 2007 op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Ask, Who Cares,” Barr wrote, “As a conservative Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2003, I was hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby. I opposed then, and continue to oppose, same-sex marriage, or the designation of gays as a constitutionally protected minority class,” Barr wrote.

“Service in the armed forces is another matter. The bottom line here is that, with nearly a decade and a half of the hybrid ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ policy to guide us, I have become deeply impressed with the growing weight of credible military opinion which concludes that allowing gays to serve openly in the military does not pose insurmountable problems for the good order and discipline of the services,” he added.

While Bob Barr still has a bit more room to evolve and improve -- it would be nice for him to say that it's a good idea for gay couples to have not just the responsibilities of marriage but also all of the rights and privileges associated with it -- he deserves credit for listening to his erstwhile opponents and coming around to their point of view.

Bob Barr's "conversion" is an example of why libertarians have to be out in the arena, making arguments, trying to change minds. He is also an example of how nobody is a lost cause and why it is important to engage in dialogue even with people with whom we vehemently disagree.

Held in Low Esteem

For the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-California) has a remarkably low opinion of the men and women who serve in the U.S. military.

During the CNN/YouTube-sponsored Republican presidential candidates' debate in Florida Wednesday night, Hunter was asked by a retired Army general whether he believes "American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians." The point of Hunter's long-winded answer was essentially "yes, they are not professional enough."

Here is Hunter's full response:

General, thanks for your service, but I believe in what Colin Powell said when he said that having openly homosexual people serving in the ranks would be bad for unit cohesion.

The reason for that, even though people point to the Israelis and point to the Brits and point to other people as having homosexuals serve, is that most Americans, most kids who leave that breakfast table and go out and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family, most of them are conservatives.

They have conservative values, and they have Judeo-Christian values. To force those people to work in a small tight unit with somebody who is openly homosexual goes against what they believe to be their principles, and it is their principles, is I think a disservice to them. I agree with Colin Powell that it would be bad for unit cohesion.

Substitute "Negroes" for "homosexuals" in Hunter's statement and you have a near-duplicate of the argument used against desegregation of the military during the Truman administration.

At that time, Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall wrote to Clark Clifford (then an advisor to President Truman, later Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson), attaching a copy of testimony about the Army's "Negro problem," about which he explained to Clifford:

I am trying to give it no large circulation as it would be unwise to have it get to the press...

(Apparently, even in the 1940s, politicians knew that it would reflect badly on them to announce they favored policies based on bigotry.)

A portion of Royall's testimony about Negroes in the military in the 1940s (culled by Average Gay Joe at GayPatriot, who deserves a hat tip) has an uncanny resemblance to what politicians like Duncan Hunter have to say about gays in the military today:

At the outset I want to make it clear that in my opinion the policies which should be applied to the use of all Army personnel, regardless of race, are those policies which best promote a sound national defense. Our basic mission is to win battles and to establish an organization capable of winning battles.

Specifically the Army is not an instrument for social evolution. It is not the Army’s job either to favor or to impede the social doctrines, no matter how progressive they may be – it is not for us to lead or to lag behind the civilian procession except to the extent that the national defense is affected…

Another – and an important – factor to be considered on the question of segregation is the morale of the troops as a whole – their satisfaction with Army life, and the spirit with which they perform Army tasks. In war, when the chips are down, this morale factor may well be the difference between victory and defeat.

We must remember that soldiers are not mere bodies that can be moved and handled as trucks and guns. They are individuals who came from civilian life and often return thereto. They are subject to all the emotions, prejudices, ideals, ambitions and inhibitions that encumber our civil population throughout the country.

Solders live and work closely together. They are not only on the same drill field also in the same living and eating quarters. From the standpoint both of morale and of efficiency it is important in peace and in war that the barracks and the unit areas be so attractive to them that they will devote not only their duty time but a reasonable part of their optional time at the post – that they will not be watching the clock for a chance to get away.

In war it is even more important that they have confidence both in their leaders and in the men that are to fight by their sides. Effective comradeship in battle calls for a warm and close personal relationship within a unit…

In this connection we must remember that a large part of the volunteers in the Army are Southerners – usually a larger proportion than from any other part of the country. Whether properly or not, it is a well known fact that close personal association with Negroes is distasteful to large percentage of Southern whites.

A total abandonment of – or a substantial and sudden change in – the Army’s partial segregation policy would in my opinion adversely affect enlistments and reenlistments not only in the South but in many other parts of the country, probably making peacetime selective service necessary. And a change in our policy would adversely affect the morale of many Southern soldiers and other soldiers now serving…

[I]n my opinion – and I believe in the opinion of a great majority of the experienced Army men and officers – it would be most difficult – and unwise from the standpoint of national defense – to require any substantial proportion of white soldiers – whether from the South or from other sections of the country – to serve under Negro officers or particularly under Negro non-commissioned officers.

It's almost like Duncan Hunter does the same sort of "research" for his speeches that Joe Biden did during his 1988 presidential campaign.

While Hunter did not directly respond to the question posed to him, it is clear from his overall remarks that he thinks most men and women in the military are inbred yahoos who lack the capacity to live and work with people who might be different from them -- people who have different backgrounds or different values, different experiences and different aspirations.

Yet Hunter severely underestimates the capability of the average soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine to be tolerant of differences and to look beyond the surface, creating cohesion even within diversity. (What's that slogan? "E pluribus unum"?) Our men and women in uniform are far better people than Hunter thinks they are.

Zogby International conducted a poll of U.S. troops who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan, which was released in December 2006. Among its findings:

Three-quarters of those surveyed stated that they felt comfortable around gays and lesbians and four-in-five (78%) noted that they would join the military regardless of their open inclusion. Additionally, a majority (52%) reports having received some form of anti-gay harassment training, with Air Force personnel representing the highest level of training (62%) and the Marine Corps the lowest (34%)....

Of those who were certain that a member of their unit was gay or lesbian, two thirds did not believe that their presence created an impact on either their personal morale (66%) or the morale of their unit (64%). Approximately one-quarter of that group believed there to be a negative impact to both.

In contrast, of those who do not suspect the presence of gays or lesbians within their unit, only half (49%) perceive no impact on personal morale, and only less than one third (26%) feel there would be no impact on their unit’s morale. Regarding their unit’s morale, a majority of this group (58%) believes if there were gays or lesbians within their unit, there would be a negative impact.

Put another way, those soldiers who know someone gay also know there is no deleterious effect on morale or unit cohesion. Those who think they do not know someone gay think otherwise.

That is the price of ignorance.

In a separate answer to the same question, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said during the St. Petersburg debate that he thinks the current "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy "seems to have worked." (Of course, Romney earlier opposed DADT, but he is such a weasel that it is impossible to know if what he says has any relationship to what he thinks -- or if he thinks at all.)

Has DADT worked? Has it worked for the thousands of men and women who were expelled from the military, having their careers disrupted? Has it worked for the taxpayers, who paid to train these men and women, only to lose their services? Has it worked for the highly-valued, scarce translators of languages like Arabic, Farsi, and Korean, who were forced to leave the armed forces simply because they were gay?

Those questions answer themselves.

I understand that Duncan Hunter is the only active GOP presidential candidate who will appear in person at the Straw Poll being held at the Republican Party of Virginia Advance this weekend in Arlington. I hope that someone there has an opportunity to ask him why he thinks American soldiers are such boobs.

Members of our armed forces deserve much more respect than what Congressman Hunter seems willing to accord them. He should be ashamed of himself.