{"id":188518,"date":"2010-09-12T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/09\/12\/dont-ask-dont-tell-ruled-unconstitutional\/"},"modified":"2010-09-12T17:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T22:05:00","slug":"dont-ask-dont-tell-ruled-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/09\/12\/dont-ask-dont-tell-ruled-unconstitutional\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell Ruled Unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the interesting things here is that the judge, Virginia Phillips, has ruled that, the policy has a, &#8221; &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/atwar.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/09\/10\/reaction-to-judges-ruling-on-dont-ask-dont-tell\/\">direct and deleterious effect&#8217; on the armed services<\/a>, which will make the overturn at the appellate level more difficult, since appeals are typically based on matters of law, and this is a determination of fact, but note that I&#8217;m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!<sup>*<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The judge will be <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2010\/sep\/10\/local\/la-me-0910-gays-military-20100910\">issuing an injunction against separations<\/a>, but will be giving the government time to appeal before doing so, so I expect another round of accelerated witch hunts in the Pentagon over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>This is an acid test of the Obama administration&#8217;s dedication to gay rights.  If they go for a stay, i.e. keep expelling gays from the military, during appeals, they are not merely doing their duty to defend existing laws, as they have previously argued, they are actively and aggressively anti-gay rights.<\/p>\n<p>My money is on Obama making the wrong decision both morally and politically, and going full bore against this decision, because I think that, much like Bill Clinton, there is a level of political, if not personal revulsion, against &#8220;te ghay&#8221; that drives them to do truly stupid and hateful things.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">I <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">LOVE IT<\/span> when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the interesting things here is that the judge, Virginia Phillips, has ruled that, the policy has a, &#8221; &#8216;direct and deleterious effect&#8217; on the armed services, which will make the overturn at the appellate level more difficult, since appeals are typically based on matters of law, and this is a determination of fact, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,972,1030,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-justice","category-lgbtq","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}