Monday Watercoooler: DADT surveys and DOMA briefs

SLDN advises gay and lesbian soldiers not to participate in DADT survey: Last week the Pentagon sent out 400,000 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell surveys to enlisted men and women. While the Defense Department maintains it plans to keep all responses confidential, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Networkwarns gay troops to tread lightly when filling out the form (they are due on August 15). “As a legal services group, our focus is on ensuring adequate legal protections for those gay and lesbian service members that participate in the surveys,” said Aubrey Sarvis, SLDN’s executive director. “We continue to have discussions with DOD and are working to make sure gay and lesbian service members are protected. At this time, our warning stands that gay and lesbian service members should not take the survey unless adequate legal protections are put in place.” When it comes DADT matters, SLDN is on target. Pay attention to them soldiers. Oh, and by the way? The survey questions are ridiculous!

Spain wins the World Cup. Congrats to Spain for its victory (unfortunately it was marred by terror attacks in Uganda). With the tournament over, American conservatives can stop whining and now enjoy their manly, non-socialistic, sports in peace.

White House to introduce national AIDS strategy. On Tuesday the Obama administration will present its national AIDS/HIV strategy. Considering how AIDS advocates are taking the White House to task, this new policy will do one of two things: a) quiet his critics, b) show that when the topic is gay this White House is utterly tone deaf.

Manhattan Borough President will get married in the Nutmeg State. Scott Stinger, a “New Yorka” through and through, plans to marry fiancée Elyse Buxbaum in Connecticut later this year. Why? As a protest for the lack of marriage rights in the Empire State. “If enough people who have somewhat of a profile — not just politicians, but artists and business leaders — start going into Massachusetts or Connecticut and show New York how embarrassing it is that you can’t get a marriage license for same-sex couples, then we will change things.”

Whose that girl? Rachel Maddow had an old school look back in the day. Bet she broke many young hearts!

Suspect arrested in year old murder. Paulina Ibarra, a transgendered woman, was murdered in her Hollywood home in August 2009. Last week the police arrested Jesus Catalan as a suspect. The case is being investigated as a hate crime.

What will Obama do with DOMA? TheAtlantic’s Marc Ambinder says the Justice Department is going to take its sweet time trying to decide how to handle last week’s DOMA decision. Makes sense. No matter what path he takes, Obama will be slammed. He can only win with gay marriage advocates by opposing DOMA. That is never going to happen. As for the other side, it’s convinced he is a same-sex marriage advocate. You know it’s bad when Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, charged the Justice Department with “deliberately sabotag[ing] this case.” Drama queen.

Heat wave. Last week the East Coast was hit with crazy heat. The best way to survive high temps is to ogle at shirtless men.

Withers: Senate bill would end DADT

Yes I’m behind on this (thanks New York Democrats), but Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced a Senate bill that would repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“Today Sen. Lieberman made history. We applaud the Senator’s unwavering commitment to a strong national defense and civil rights,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal …

Senator Harry Reid Says Obama Should Sign Order on Gay Troops, SLDN Also Joins Call for Executive Option

SANTA BARBARA, CA — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called on President Obama to sign an executive order suspending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, according to the Advocate magazine.

Referring to the repeal of the ban, Reid told Advocate reporter Kerry Eleveld that, “My hope is that it can be done administratively.” Eleveld added that, “A Democratic aide later clarified that Reid was speaking about the possibility of using an executive order to suspend discharges or perhaps halting enforcement of the policy by changing departmental regulations within the Department of Defense.”

As well, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) has called on President Obama to sign an executive order. In a letter to the New York Times yesterday, SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis wrote that, “President Obama should consider all viable options he can take on his own to get rid of this discriminatory law, including issuing a ‘stop-loss’ order.” For more than a decade, SLDN has been the largest and most influential group in the country working on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The idea of ending the ban by executive order gained momentum after the release last month of a Palm Center study showing that the president has the authority to suspend “don’t ask, don’t tell” via a stroke of the pen. Before that time, many argued that only Congress or the courts could lift the ban on service by openly gay troops.

Others calling for the President to sign an executive order include the New York Times editorial page, the Human Rights Campaign, Knights Out, an organization of gay and lesbian alumni of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center CEO Lorri Jean, and former Clinton White House official Richard Socarides.

Palm Center Director Aaron Belkin said that awareness of the executive option has changed the conversation about “don’t ask, don’t tell” substantially. “Obama used to duck the issue by blaming Congress for the inertia. Now it’s clear that he has unilateral authority to fulfill his campaign promise.”

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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Sarvis: Time is now to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Saying that lifting the military gay ban is a matter of urgent national security, Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, is calling on President Barack Obama to form a panel to study the effect of ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and present its findings within 90 to 120 days. Any further delay in overturning current law “is a slap in the face to the estimated 65,000 gays and lesbians currently serving their country,” Sarvis writes. CBS News * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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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.