SCLC SPLIT OVER GAY MARRIAGE: Los Angeles office at odds with national officials.

*Civil Rights Movement icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a group of Black activists who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1959.

Even after King’s assassination in 1968, the SCLC remained one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations. But now the group’s cohesion is under threat. The issue which could potentially split the organization is same-sex marriage.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based leadership of the group has threatened to suspend or remove Rev. Eric P. Lee as head of the Los Angeles SCLC chapter because of his outspoken support for homosexual marriage.

But Lee and supporters in the L.A. chapter are fighting back essentially arguing that the national board does not have the authority to remove him. Lee is also thought to be seeking support from other SCLC chapters around the country.

Officially the national board says it is neutral on the gay marriage issue but in reality, the group dominated by Black Southern ministers is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Their view appears to be backed by a large majority of African Americans. An Edison/Mitofsky exit poll found that 70 percent of Black voters supported California’s Proposition 8 last fall. The proposition banned gay-marriage in the state.

A similar national online survey conducted recently by Taylor Media Services found 72 percent of Blacks opposing same-sex marriage which was supported by a slim majority of whites. Hispanics were evenly split on the issue.

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WATCH: Maddow Calls Out Obama On “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

Reacting to yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court to not hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the military’s longstanding “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, Rachel Maddow featured a segment that broadly called the Obama administration’s oft-stated commitments to ending the practice into question.
Maddow points out that the case itself doesn’t hurt the cause of ending DADT. Advocates for a change in policy were of the mind that the Supreme Court challenge would not be a game-changer. Nevertheless, Maddow opined that the case was “a big deal” because for all of President Barack Obama’s past advocacy in support of ending DADT, he now has a lawyer of his very own arguing that the policy is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.”
Which is, of course, ridiculous. All “don’t ask don’t tell” is, is a policy by which everyone pretends that the gay and lesbian soldiers that are already serving in the military aren’t really there, and that everything is okay provided that those gay and lesbian soldiers agree to participate in the Grand Shenanigan of Pollyanna Pretense. So, no, Mr, President. No, Mr. President’s lawyer. No. No. And, no. It simply cannot be said that “don’t ask don’t tell” is rationally related to a single blessed thing.

WATCH: Maddow Calls Out Obama On “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

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Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout

When Barack Obama sought the presidency, he pledged to reverse the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. Yet on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a gay Ohio soldier’s challenge to the law — with the legal backing of none other than the Obama Administration.
James Pietrangelo II, the former Army infantryman and lawyer whose case the high court declined to review, reserved most of his ire for President Obama instead of the court. “He’s a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar,” Pietrangelo said in an interview with TIME shortly after the high court declined to hear his appeal. “This is a guy who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo, and playing with him on the White House lawn than he has working for equality for gay people,” he added. “If there were millions of black people as second-class citizens, or millions of Jews or Irish, he would have acted immediately” upon taking office to begin working to lift “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Pietrangelo fought in Iraq in 1991 as an infantryman, and returned as a JAG officer for the second Iraq War, before being booted out in 2004 for declaring he was gay as he was readying for a third combat tour. He was representing himself before the high court. (See pictures of the gay rights movement.)
The Obama Administration, in its brief in the case last month, said a lower court acted properly in upholding the gay ban. “Applying the strong deference traditionally afforded to the Legislative and Executive Branches in the area of military affairs, the court of appeals properly upheld the statute,” argued Elena Kagan, who as Solicitor General represents the Administration before the Supreme Court. The bar on gays serving openly is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion,” her 12-page filing added.
The endorsement of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by the Administration marks the latest rightward tack by Obama. The President denounced many of George W. Bush’s national-security policies during the campaign, but in office has adopted more conservative positions, including endorsing military commissions to try purported terrorists, and declining to release a second batch of photographs depicting alleged U.S. maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. His stance on “Don’t ask, don’t tell” may be more surprising, because Obama aides have made clear the President wants the ban lifted eventually. (Watch a gay marriage wedding video.)
Pietrangelo doesn’t buy the line from Obama aides — and the Pentagon — that they’re too busy grappling with a faltering economy and two wars to handle the gay ban right away. “It’s a complete lie that he has too much stuff on his plate — this is the guy who criticized Bush for not being able to multitask,” Pietrangelo says. “We have an old saying in the military — the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.” See Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout TIME

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Supreme Court Rejects Challenge To “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed with the Obama administration and upheld Pentagon policy barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The court said it will not hear an appeal from former Army Capt. James Pietrangelo II, who was dismissed under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The federal appeals court in Boston earlier threw out a lawsuit filed by Pietrangelo and 11 other veterans. He was the only member of that group who asked the high court to rule that the Clinton-era policy is unconstitutional.

During last year’s campaign, President Barack Obama indicated he supported the eventual repeal of the policy, but he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January. Meanwhile, the White House has said it won’t stop gays and lesbians from being dismissed from the military.

In court papers, the administration said the appeals court ruled correctly in this case when it found that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman referred requests for comment to the Justice Department, but said the military policy “implements the law.”

“The law requires the (Defense) Department to separate from the armed services members who engage in or attempt to engage in homosexual acts; state they are homosexual or bisexual; or marry or attempt to marry a person of the same biological sex,” Whitman said in a statement.

A legal advocacy group vowed to press ahead with efforts to reverse the policy despite the legal setback.

“We don’t see that at all as bad news for repeal,” said Kevin Nix, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “What happened today puts the ball back into the court of Congress and the White House to repeal the law, and that’s where we think it should be right now.”

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Time To Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

During his campaign for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would push to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) — the military’s policy that bars gay men and women from serving openly. Since taking office, however, Obama and other officials serving in his administration have pushed the issue to the back burner. When asked about addressing DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I feel like we’ve got a lot on our plates right now and let’s push that one down the road a little bit.” Ret. Gen. Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told the President recently “not to add another controversy to his already-full plate.” On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopolous asked Jones if the policy would be overturned. “I don’t know,” he replied. In fact, the White House website recently watered down language on repealing the policy, replacing the administration’s commitment to “repealing” DADT with a commitment to simply “changing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a sensible way.” (The more definitive “repeal” language has since been reinserted.) At the same time, Obama has indicated that he remains committed to repealing the policy. Sandy Tsao, an Army officer who told her superiors last January that she is gay, wrote to Obama urging him to act on repealing DADT. Last week, Obama personally responded to Tsao, writing, “I committed to changing our current policy. Although it will take some time to complete. … I intend to fulfill my commitment!”

DADT STILL CLAIMING CASUALTIES: DADT continues to weaken our nation’s military. Last week, the Army sent National Guard Lt. Daniel Choi — a West Point graduate who served in Iraq and is fluent in Arabic — a letter informing him that he is no longer welcome in the U.S. military because he is gay. The Army said it was dismissing Choi for “moral or professional dereliction,” specifically for admitting “publicly that you are a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct. Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard.” Choi is one of more than 13,000 U.S. military personnel to be discharged because of DADT. This number includes those with special skills deemed “mission critical,” such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists like Choi. The Government Accountability Office found in 2005 that the cost of discharging and replacing servicemembers fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million — roughly $20,000 per discharged service member. While DADT cannot be repealed without congressional action, University of California associate professor Aaron Belkin notes that as president, Obama has the authority to suspend enforcement of the policy. Though it is unclear whether Obama will take this route (especially based on Jones’s advice), Choi said on MSNBC last week that he plans to “fully fight” his dismissal “tooth and nail.” “I believe that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is wrong, and what we really need to be encouraging soldiers to do is to don’t lie, don’t hide, don’t discriminate, and don’t weaken the military. That’s what we need to be promoting,” he said.

REPEAL DADT: Supporters of the discriminatory DADT often argue that repealing it would weaken the military (despite the fact that Arabic-linguists who are in short supply have been discharged because of it) and fragment unit cohesion. However, a bipartisan study commissioned by the Palm Center at the University of California last year found that “the presence of gays in the military is unlikely to undermine the ability to fight and win.” Choi said that “the biggest thing” he is “angry about” is that the Army claims that his unit suffered “good order and discipline” because he is gay. “That’s a big insult to my unit,” he said. After he came out as gay and before he was discharged, Choi said that “so many people came up to me, my peers, my subordinates, people that outranked me, folks that have been in the Army — and this is an infantry unit, infantry men that — coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, sir, hey, Lieutenant Choi, we know, and we don’t care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team.’” Indeed, a December 2006 survey of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found that 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” Moreover, the American public doesn’t care either. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, nearly two-thirds disagreed with the argument that “allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would be divisive for the troops and hurt their ability to fight effectively.” Ret. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Hugh Aitken, who participated in the Palm Center’s study, has criticized Obama’s plans to allow the Pentagon to review the policy before deciding to act on any repeal. “There’s been enough studying throughout the years,” he said. “Creating a new study will not change the facts.”

RIGHT WING STILL OPPOSES A REPEAL: The ultra-conservative Center for Military Readiness (CMR), a group that opposes women and gays serving in combat, is leading an effort against repealing DADT and even trying to block gays from serving in the military altogether. The group’s president, Elaine Donnelly, told Congress last year that having gays serve in the military “sexualizes the atmosphere” because they “engage in passive aggressive behavior.” CMR also tries to muddy the waters with “gay horror stories” from the military, despite having acknowledged that such stories are “very difficult to find.” Prominent members of Congress continue to obstruct as well. When asked about DADT last Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered his support for it. “Right now the military is functioning extremely well in very difficult conditions,” he said, adding that “the policy has been working and I think it’s been working well.” Other members of Congress, such as Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), disagree. Sestak, himself a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, said of DADT recently on MSNBC, “We have to correct this. It’s just not right.” “I can remember being out there in command, and someone would come up to you and start to tell you — and you just want to say, no, I don’t want to lose you, you’re too good,” Sestak said.

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In Military, New Debate Over Policy Toward Gays

WEST POINT, N.Y. — Here at the military academy that is nearly as old as the nation itself, two cadets recently engaged in a modern debate: whether they agreed with President Obama’s pledge to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly.

“From what I’ve heard from my classmates, people are kind of against it,” said Daniel Szatkowski, a senior from Edmond, Okla. But Adrienne Rolle, a senior from Brooklyn, said she had no problem with lifting the ban, although she said that some of her male classmates did.

“People are more comfortable with ignorance,” Cadet Rolle said of the reality that gay men and lesbians already serve in the military.

West Point is not a perfect microcosm of the armed forces, but recent conversations with the cadets who will become the Army’s next generation of leaders reflect uncertainty about what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has characterized as a “complex and difficult problem.”

While Mr. Obama has promised to get rid of the 16-year-old policy that allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep their sexual orientation secret, Mr. Gates has said that both he and the president want to push the issue “down the road a bit.”

Advocacy groups have stepped into the vacuum. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents some of the 13,000 gay men and lesbians discharged from the military since the policy took effect, is intensifying lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill — changing the policy requires legislation — and calling on the president to make good on his word.

“If he doesn’t speak up, he’s going to end up O.K.’ing the firing of service members for being gay,” said Aubrey Sarvis, the group’s executive director.

In recent years, prominent retired generals and admirals have also urged repeal, among them Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the policy was adopted after a blowup over the issue in the early days of the Clinton administration.

On the other side, some 1,000 retired officers supported by the conservative Center for Military Readiness sent an “open letter” to Mr. Obama saying they were “greatly concerned” about the impact of repeal on recruitment, morale and unit cohesion.

“How would women in the military feel if they were required to accommodate men in their private quarters?” said Elaine Donnelly, the center’s president.

Col. Thomas A. Kolditz, the chairman of West Point’s department of behavioral sciences and leadership who discusses “don’t ask, don’t tell” in his classes, said that cadets were roughly split for and against openly gay service but that most did not feel strongly about their views.

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Gay Military Ban Architects Admit Deception

And last night, things got even more interesting when Dr. Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow at the Palm Center, went on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and said “don’t ask” advisors now admit the policy was a deliberate deception based on no empirical evidence.
Frank, author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, told openly lesbian Rachel Maddow that military advisors to Clinton have admitted to the deception.
“They said it was based on nothing,” Frank told Maddow. “It was rooted in their own prejudices and fears. They even said they didn’t know what sexual orientation meant.”
“Instead they crated this unit cohesion argument. Which is the idea that openly gay service will somehow undermine unit cohesion and that you have to force service members to lie in order to preserve unit cohesion. Instead of the other way around, that forcing people to lie actually has its own impact on unit cohesion.”
Frank agreed with Maddow’s statement: “A key advisor to this panel admitted full-stop that the unit cohesion argument was completely made up out of whole cloth.” See Gay Military Ban Architects Admit Deception
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Marine General Questions Obama Plan to Study Gay Ban, Scholars Concur that More Study is Unnecessary and Could Have Political Costs

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A retired Brigadier General for the U.S. Marine Corps has questioned the Obama administration’s plan to form a Pentagon commission to study “don’t ask, don’t tell.” “There’s been enough studying throughout the years,” said General Hugh Aitken. “Creating a new study will not change the facts.” Aitken participated in a comprehensive 2008 review of the policy which found that there is no evidence showing that openly gay service would harm the military, and a great deal of evidence showing it would not.

According to a February 1st Boston Globe report, the Obama administration has decided not to move forward on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” until the Pentagon can “undertake a detailed study of how a change in the policy would affect the military.” This may not happen for several months or longer, says the Globe article.

But scholars echoed General Aitken’s argument. Dr. Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow at the Palm Center and author of the forthcoming book, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, said he has reviewed “all of the evidence on gays in the military, and there is simply no question about whether or not a policy change would undermine unit cohesion. It would not.”

Dr. Laura Miller, a well-respected military sociologist who co-authored a study on gays in the military with the late Charles Moskos, author of the gay ban, said, “you don’t need a commission to tell you that you need to retain every able, trained, experienced and productive member at a time when both the stakes and the manpower needs are high.”

Dr. Gary Gates, a UCLA scholar who has authored a number of studies on gays in the military, agreed that “the proposal to study ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ yet again seems unnecessary. Extensive scholarly research already shows that allowing the 65,000 gays and lesbians currently in uniform to serve openly will not harm the military in any way.”

Professor Diane Mazur, a former Air Force officer who teaches at the University of Florida and who has published widely on gays in the military, added that “every research study published over the last fifteen years has concluded that military readiness is not harmed — and may be strengthened — when all qualified Americans can serve and no one has to live in secrecy.”

Relevant research includes an extensive 1993 study by the RAND corporation as well as two official military studies: a 1989 study by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center and the Navy’s 1957 Crittenden report. It also includes numerous academic studies published in leading military journals such as International Security, Armed Forces and Society, and Parameters, the official journal of the U.S. Army War College. Most recently, a bi-partisan panel of retired flag officers, which included General Aitken, released a report last year which found that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was unnecessary and harmful to the military. All these studies reached the same conclusion: that allowing open gay service would not undermine the military.

Frank’s new book, which is being called the definitive story of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” chronicles the history of the 1993 debates over gay service and shows that, even then, the word “study” quickly became code for “delay and kill.” “Sam Nunn said any review of the gay ban should begin with a ‘Pentagon study’,” said Frank. “Colin Powell said the president should move cautiously and ‘study’ the issue; Bob Dole said the president should appoint a ‘study commission’; and ultimately President Clinton called for a 6-month ‘study’ period. The result was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ which has made no one happy. I think there’s a lesson here.”

Dr. Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center and a nationally recognized expert on gay service, said that President Obama has stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges because, while the law mandates discharge if a “finding” is made of homosexual conduct, nothing in the law requires that such a finding be made. Given CNN’s December 2008 poll showing 81 percent public approval for open gay service, Belkin said, Obama should not hesitate to end the policy by executive order.

“Ironically, Obama’s careful effort to avoid Clinton’s mistakes could cause him to repeat them,” he said. “When President Clinton called a time-out to study the situation, that allowed opposition forces time to rally. In some cases, the Pentagon just needs to be told what to do.” Belkin said he has been told privately by top military officials that in cases like this one, they often prefer to be told what to do. “They know it’s the right step,” he said, “and sometimes they’d rather it be made for them.”

The Palm Center is a research institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Center uses rigorous social science to inform public discussions of controversial social issues, enabling policy outcomes to be informed more by evidence than by emotion. Its data-driven approach is premised on the notion that the public makes wise choices on social issues when high-quality information is available. For more information, visit www.palmcenter.ucsb.edu.

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Psychoanalysts Approve Position Statement on Homosexuals and Bisexuals Serving in the Military

NEW YORK, NY — Though it’s not widely known, psychoanalysts as a professional group are proactive on a number of social issues including homosexuality. During the organization’s Winter 2009 Meeting held January 14 – 18 in New York, the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) approved a position statement regarding homosexuals and bisexuals serving in the military.

“President Obama has said that he will repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. For the mental health and safety of those in the military and for those who are contemplating joining the military, this repeal needs to happen now. Evidence shows the presence of gays does not undermine unit cohesion. Tens of thousands of gays, lesbians and bisexuals already do serve openly. Discharging gays, lesbians and bisexuals wastes thousands of highly trained, badly needed troops,” commented Ethan Grumbach, Ph.D., chair of APsaA’s Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues.

The position statement begins as follows:

“The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) opposes the military policy mandated by Title 10 of the United States Code (Section 654) which prohibits an individual’s service in the military on the basis of sexual orientation. Section 654 bans openly gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals from serving in the military. APsaA strongly advocates that the United States Government overturn the current policy.

“It is the position of APsaA that sexual orientation is not germane to any aspect of military effectiveness, including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment or retention. Empirical evidence, as well as comparative data from foreign militaries and domestic police and fire departments shows that when lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are allowed to serve openly there is no evidence of disruption. APsaA recognizes and abhors the many detrimental effects the policy has had on individual service members, the military and the United States society since the enactment of Title 10, section 654 in 1994. Years of psychological research and experience have shown the extensive mental toll of keeping one’s sexual orientation hidden. Mandating a ban on self disclosure of sexual orientation for personnel in uniform is thus unnecessarily harmful to their mental health and well being.” (The full position statement and references continue online.)

The American Psychoanalytic Association is a professional organization of psychoanalysts throughout the United States and is comprised of approximately 3,300 members.

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Is California ready for 2010 vote on gay marriage?

Could California be voting on gay marriage again next year? Well, there is a new group, Yes! on Equality, that is beginning a campaign for the “2010 Marriage Equality Initiative.” It’s hard to say how serious this is, and whether voters really want to take this issue up again, but the website says organizers have learned their lesson from Prop. 8:

In addition to starting early, there are numerous factors that distinguish the Yes! Campaign. Perhaps the most paramount, is the inclusion of people. RollingStone, in a critical analysis of the No on 8 Campaign, noted that No on 8 failed to create a grassroots style organization and excluded LGBT community leaders. The Yes! Campaign recognizes this and has therefore built its foundation upon the inclusion of a diverse set of people. The purpose of this campaign is not to turn-away supporters, but rather to bring them together for a more effective outcome. Connecting with other minorities is an imperative part of this cohesion. The Yes! Campaign is continuing where other attempts left off by targeting all groups in our society.

Examiner.com reports signature gathering is coming.

See Is California ready for 2010 vote on gay marriage?
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