TW: I have a feeling the Obama Administration is going to announce the removal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" some day soon and it will be met with shrugs. If so what does that mean? Was Obama contemptible for waiting or brilliant in letting public opinion continue to evolve to the point where a collective shrug results? If a shrug results, then are not additional measures to push gay rights forward more politically achievable? Interest groups are right to press their agendas in an effort to influence public opinion. But generally only when that public opinion has shifted can real change be manifested.
From Economist:
"THE latest Gallup polling on whether gays should be able to serve in the military really flummoxes the White House's decision to slow-peddle some kind of reform. Everyone's in favour of letting gays serve. Weekly churchgoers? Sixty percent. Conservatives? Fifty-eight percent.
It's worth remembering, though, how unimaginable this used to be. In the 1993 debate over gays in the military, Robert Byrd (still a Democratic senator from West Virginia) thundered that letting gays serve was exactly the kind of decadence that led to the fall of Rome. Since then there's been a dramatic mainstreaming of gay culture and two hot wars that cast unwelcome attention on the plight of talented gay translators who couldn't keep their jobs. The courts, meanwhile, have punted on the issue.
Barack Obama's timid approach is in part a result of memories of the 1993 debate, which bogged down Bill Clinton's presidency in its early days. "[W]hile the political logic behind the administration's thinking is understandable enough, the moral logic is contemptible," said Matthew Yglesias last month, noting the recent dismissal of two gay soldiers. Now, though, even the political logic seems unreasonable, so we are left with an unpopular, immoral policy. What to do next might be the easiest decision Barack Obama makes over the next four years. There is no excuse for further delay."
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