Advocates give renewed push to lifting military ban

The debate over the military gay ban is part of the classroom discussions at West Point, where cadets reportedly are split on whether the policy should be changed, with most not firmly coming down on either side of the issue. In related news, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, as part of ramping up its campaign to lift the ban, has published an open letter to President Barack Obama, seeking to hold him to his campaign pledge to end the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The New York Times (4/30) , Pam’s House Blend (4/28) , The Politico (Washington)/Ben Smith’s blog (4/27) * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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Hundreds rally in DC against military ban

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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ENDA, end of military ban, DP benefits top Polis’ agenda

The Employment Nondiscrimination Act, lifting the military gay ban and providing domestic-partner benefits to federal employees are the chief first-term goals cited by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo. “We should absolutely be holding our elected officials, including President Obama, to their commitments to support those three pieces of legislation — and our elected members of the House and Senate to deliver on those,” he said. Dallas Voice