Gen. James Conway — the Commandant of the U. S. Marine Corps — has been the most outspoken military opponent of permitting gay men and women to serve openly in the U.S. military, going so far as to suggest that straight marines should not live alongside gay servicemembers. But with Conway’s term coming to end, Defense Secretary Robert Gates “has recommended that Gen. James Amos will be the next commandant of the Marine Corps” — a man who is presumably more willing to carry out administration policy and implement new regulations repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).

While this consideration is not publicly acknowledged — the Washington Post notes that Gates wanted to shake things up and select “someone who would help the Marine Corps chart a course beyond the current wars“” — his more supportive stance towards ending the DADT likely weighed on the decision:

Sources have informed LezGetReal that General Amos’ position on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell mirrors that of Admiral Michael Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This means that General Amos believes that the study should be finished before the law is repealed, and the best way to move forward on repeal can be determined. General Amos is said to be more open to change than General Conway has been, or either General Dunford or General James Mattis, who were also considered for this job. Additionally, Generals Dunford and Mattis are said to be far less willing to consider a repeal of DADT and far closer to General Conway’s views on the issue of lesbians and gays serving openly.

If Amos is willing to think not only beyond current wars but also conservative social norms — which is where Conway clearly fell short — then his nomination sounds like a good thing for the institution as a whole and particularly its closeted gay members. The success of repeal will depend heavily on how the military implements regulations overturning the ban and Amos probably be willing to explore more inclusive changes than his immediate predecessor.

The other point worth reiterating is that one’s opposition to repealing DADT has more to do with general attitudes about social policy than any kind of concerns about the future of the military. After all, if Gates is willing to nominate someone he hopes will shake up the Marine Corps and secure its future, his selection of Amos — if we are too believe the rumors about his more liberal DAD views — suggests that that is very much compatible with open service.

When congressional Republicans tried in vain to thwart a bill that began the process to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), they were quick to claim they were standing up for the preferences of U.S. military personnel. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) argued that soldiers would be less willing to fight and die “for the guy in the next foxhole” if they knew their fellow soldier was gay. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) ominously suggested that, “If someone has to be overt about their sexuality, whether it’s in a bunker where they’re confined under fire, then it’s a problem.”

Rep. Charles Djou (R-HI) was one of the five GOP representatives to vote for the repeal process. When ABC News asked him about his vote, Djou didn’t said that DADT “just simply doesn’t work” because many soldiers “suddenly claim they are gay” to avoid combat while collecting discharge bonuses. In an interview with ThinkProgress on Monday, he still refuted some of the rhetoric of his colleagues and said that based on his experience as a captain in the Army Reserves, servicemembers would readily adapt to a new policy:

TP: A lot of people are saying that some servicemembers may not defend their comrades if they know they’re gay, or that troops may not accept a change of allowing gay members to serve openly. Do you find this to be true based on your experience?

DJOU: No. No. You know, I think, having been in the service, and I understand that the troops have their own viewpoint on things, which might not nececarily be 100% an exactly reflection of what the average American electorate is, but by and large I have found that with the United States military, and service — members of the service who I have served with, when the civilian officials, the President or the Congress, give an order, a directive, it’s followed, and it’s followed to a tee. That’s what you’re expected to do. And if you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t be in the service and you shouldn’t be wearing the uniform. It’s as simple as that.

Watch it:

Djou’s comments are bolstered by polling data; in a survey commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation, 73 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said they’d support allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly, and 58 percent said they already knew gays and lesbians they were serving alongside. According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, around 500 U.S. soldiers are “out” to some of their colleagues and continue to serve “without consequence.”

- William Tomasko

A comprehensive analysis of pre-election polling data from 33 states that passed anti-gay marriage initiatives has found that pro and anti marriage equality campaigns have wasted millions of dollars trying to change the minds of voters during short-term campaign seasons. As it turns out, public opinion “typically changed very little over the course of the campaigns”:

“This research underscores what many of us have learned through personal experience,” noted Thalia Zepatos, Director of Public Engagement for Freedom to Marry. “There is no 30-second political ad that can replace thoughtful conversations that committed gay and lesbian people have about marriage with their neighbors at a barbecue, with family members over holiday dinner, and with colleagues at work and at school. Smart public education- outside of intense political battles – that tells the stories of how millions of Americans are harmed by being denied the freedom to marry have resulted in 17% increase in Gallup Poll support for the freedom to marry between 1996 and 2010.”.”

Indeed, the point here seems to be that gay people interacting and building strong relationships with other communities is far more effective for advancing the cause of equal rights than 30-second ads or fliers. Nationally, increased acceptance of gay people has corresponded with the growing number of Americans who now say they personally know a gay person. For instance, a CBS News Poll released earlier this month found that 77% of Americans “say they know someone who is gay or lesbian,” an increase of 35 percentage points since 1992. Simultaneously, only 43% of Americans currently see homosexual relations between consenting adults as “wrong” – a drop of 19 percentage points from a Gallup poll taken in 1978:

All of this may be a condemnation of existing messaging techniques, but it’s also a mixed bag. Gay advocates will have to make some long term investments in actually knowing people, instead of simply pressuring them to vote one way or another. Some of this may occur naturally, as the visibility of gay people increases in politics, the media, and every day interactions, but other campaigns will have to reach-out to people outside the battle zones where the anti-gay marriage ads are no more effective than the marriage equality spots. The other side, meanwhile, will have to force Americans to form long-term relationships with bigots. Good luck with that.

As Judge Vaughn Walker prepares to hear closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger the landmark case against California’s Proposition 8 today, supporters of the measure are urging him to “go a step further and revoke state recognition of the marriages of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before” voters stripped same-sex couples of their right to marry in November 2008.

The closing arguments come almost five months after testimony ended in January and two years after “the first legal marriages in California on June 16, 2008.” Prop. 8 overturned the court ruling that permitted the marriages and a separate ruling upheld the constitutionality of the measure, “while also affirming the legality of 18,000 same-sex marriages performed before the election.”

The Perry case was first filed on May 22, 2009 by The American Foundation for Equal Rights on behalf of two couples who wish to be married but cannot because of Prop. 8, and led by Theodore Olson and David Boies, the lawyers on opposite sides of Bush v. Gore. Legal scholars have described the case as “the most important battle between tradition and modernity since the Scopes trial” and expect that Judge Walker’s decision — which most certainly will be appealed and could reach the Supreme court in two year — “will be a blockbuster, at least in terms of its scope, depth and detail.” The Foundation describes the case in this way:

At its core, this case is about equal justice under the law. Separate is never equal, and Prop. 8 violates Americans’ constitutional rights by creating separate classes of people with different laws for each one.

Prop. 8 denies fundamental constitutional liberties, which harms adults and their children without due process and for no good reason – no compelling government interest is advanced through Prop. 8. It is wrong to deny people fundamental constitutional liberties, like equal protection under the law, simply because of who they are.

The objective of the lawyers supporting the Prop. 8 was to prove that the state had a rational basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry, but as the LA Times notes, throughout the case, “some of the strongest arguments in favor of same-sex marriage were made by those opposing it.” For instance, “one witness who had been hired to testify that gay men and lesbians wield significant political power — and therefore were not a group that had especially suffered from discrimination — ended up conceding that at least some people voted for Proposition 8 because of prejudice against homosexuals” and “had made statements in the past that minorities were vulnerable to harm from ballot initiatives, and that courts should protect them from such harm.” Another witness, David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, testified that “preserving traditional marriage should take priority over the rights of gays and lesbians — but then offered no proof that same-sex marriage would in any way harm the institution of marriage, and admitted that marriage would be beneficial to families headed by same-sex couples.”

Documents and videos obtained by Olson and Boies also revealed that “the Prop. 8 campaign paid for broadcasts that sought to link marriage equality to incest, polygamy, bestiality, and pedophilia to justify the elimination of people’s rights,” suggesting that proponents of the proposition were driven by discriminatory motives, not state interest.

Today’s closing arguments will likely last all day, with a ruling expected in the coming weeks. Walker sent both sides 11 pages of questions he wants addressed in the arguments. You can read their responses here and here or follow live coverage from inside the courtroom here.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Gen. John Sheehan — the retired four-star general of the U.S. Marine Corps who suggested back in March that gay soldiers were responsible for the Srebrenica massacre — have written a new POLITICO op-en in which they argue that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is “a political charade to mask a foreordained conclusion.”

Perkins and Sheehan predict that President Obama will alter the Pentagon’s review of the policy to suit his own political agenda and suggest that openly gay men would spread AIDS to the troops and engage in homosexual “behavior” that is “detrimental” to the military:

Yet homosexuality carries with it profound behavioral implications. Sexual attraction among members of the same sex — living, exercising, fighting and training alongside one another in the closest of quarters — could devastate morale, foster heightened interpersonal tension and lead to division among those who, more than virtually any other group in society, need to act as one. [...]

In addition, the medical implications of Obama’s proposal are compelling. According to data released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gay and bisexual men are 50 times more likely to have HIV than heterosexual men….This proposal is not about bigotry. Race is a superficial and benign element of one’s humanness, while homosexuality is a matter of behavior.

Homosexuality is not about civil rights but conduct detrimental to the discipline, trust and combat readiness of what has been — and still is — the world’s finest military.

Earlier this year, Sheehan apologized to former Dutch Chief of Staff Van den Breemen for his suggestion that gays caused the massacre, saying that his memory of discussions they had fifteen years ago about some social issues were ‘inaccurate.’ “Sheehan also said that individual soldiers were in “no way” responsible for the massacre. Now, it seems that Perkins has convinced him that gays can be responsible for at least some of the problems in the U.S. forces (H/T: Right Wing Watch).

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly may have compared gay people to Al Qaeda, but he was right about one thing: the French McDonalds ad, “come as you are,” featuring a gay boy talking to his boyfriend will never air in the United States. McDonald’s Chief Operating Officer Donald Thompson is telling the Chicago Tribune that the ad runs counter to American cultural norms:

THOMPSON: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don’t impose those on anybody else. I’ve been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don’t believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it’s not that I’m to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald’s, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We’re going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we’re going to learn from. But, you’re right, that commercial won’t show in the United States.

Watch the ad:

The young man in this ad is gay and hasn’t yet come out to his father. But the message transcends sexuality; it explores the common themes of teenage romance and parent-teenager misunderstandings. The ‘come as you are’ tag line suggests that these things are just a natural fact of life and have little to do with sexual orientation.

To be fair, it’s unclear what Thompson is saying. On one hand, he’s suggesting that the company’s respect for diversity and sensitivity to different cultures encouraged it to run the ‘come as you are’ ad in France. Yet, he’s also implying that inclusivity runs counter to American culture and that some would be offended by the ad.

But Americans are becoming increasingly accepting of seeing gays and lesbians in the media. According to a new CBS News poll, only 43% of Americans currently see homosexual relations between consenting adults as “wrong” – a drop of 19 percentage points from a Gallup poll taken in 1978. Gallup found that “Americans’ support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010,” with “a 16-point jump in acceptance among Catholics.”

Thompson’s reading of American culture is outdated, but to keep the 43% of Americans who think homosexuality as wrong as customers, he is willing to ignore what he describes as the company’s so-called “core values.” (H/T: Joe.My.God)

Late last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House of Representatives approved identical amendments to the Defense Authorization bill that would begin the process of repealing the Don’t Ask, Dont’ Tell policy. Under the agreement, repeal would not occur unless President Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen certified the Pentagon’s on-going review to ensure that repeal did not undermine military effectiveness.

On Saturday, during a town hall in Queen Creek, Arizona, a DADT repeal activist confronted Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about his pledge to filibuster the entire defense authorization measure if it included the DADT repeal amendment. McCain first claimed that he opposed the measure because it repealed DADT without permitting the Pentagon to finish their study of the policy:

MCCAIN ANSWER 1: I have a big problem with repealing a piece of legislation, that’s the law, without assessing and surveying the effects on the ground, battle effectiveness, recruiting and retention of men and women in the military. I have a big problem with it.

But when the activist explained that the military and the President would have to certify the study, McCain acknowledged the existence of an assesment, but complained that it excluded the service chiefs. Still, he erroneously insisted that the study would occur only after the policy was repealed:

MCCAIN ANSWER 2: It does not include the four service chiefs….it does not sir. I’ll show it to you in writing. It cuts out the service chiefs. It says the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall make that decision and the repeal would take place and then the assessment would take place.

Watch it:

The activist on the video notes that at the end of his answer, McCain called on his own staff member to change the subject to immigration. But with his mind still on DADT, he doubled down on his fictitious characterization of the amendment and said, “Sir, if you give me an email address, I will send you the text of the legislation that was passed in the Senate Armed Services Committee this afternoon.” The activist responded by saying that McCain’s office already had his email address, since he had been arrested for protesting DADT outside of the Senator’s Phoenix office.

Transcript: Read more

Yesterday, I argued that the Department of Justice was right in asking the courts to delay a court ruling on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “A court decision supporting the ban could energize not only conservative advocates but also the men of the military who have publicly embraced the President’s decision as a general concept, but seem very uncertain about the prospect of actually regulating DADT out of existence.” AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis characterizes my position as “wrong” and “dangerous,” saying that I had decided that “the gay community should give up using the courts to fight for our civil rights.” “So CAP is now taking the position that civil rights advocates shouldn’t go the courts, ever,” Aravosis asks.

The question is surely rhetorical, or perhaps Aravosis isn’t aware that on Tuesday CAP CEO John Podesta published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the courts should be used to advance marriage equality and announced that he has agreed to co-chair the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. In covering this development, on AmericaBlog, Aravosis’ colleague Joe Sudbay describes the op-ed as “strong and unapologetic“:

It’s good…. Podesta is the personification of a Washington insider. He was Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton. He founded CAP. He was the chair of Obama’s transition. Many of the DC Democratic insider-types have kept their distance from the marriage issue. Podesta’s engagement is an important signal for that crowd.

Let me assure you then, that in the 48 hours since the op-ed was published, CAP has not reconsidered. Nor is it “taking the position that civil rights advocates shouldn’t go the courts, ever.” My point was to say that the risks of a negative decision far outweigh the benefits of an unconstitutional ruling and in all his grand proclamations about how dangerous the Center is, Aravosis never actually addressed the substance of my argument.

Even if the courts were to strike down the policy, it would still take some amount of time for the military to institute new regulations and there is simply no evidence that the time to implement a new policy would be any faster than the current process. This doesn’t even address the fact that any decision would be stayed pending further proceedings and appealed — a process that would take far longer than the current political track. For instance, in Loving v. Virginia, a case which Aravosis cites, it took four years after the ACLU filed its first motion before the Supreme Court eventually ruled for the Lovings. A few isolated districts complied with the Browne v. Board decision, but the ruling encountered massive resistance until the early 1960s.

Finally, the Pentagon certainly wouldn’t “openly defy a court order striking down DADT as unconstitutional,” but it could certainly use a negative ruling as an excuse to maintain the status quo. That, would truly be dangerous.

Over at AmericaBlog, Joe Sudbay and John Aravosis criticize the the Department of Justice, “which has aggressively defended the discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law” for asking the court to delay its ruling in light of Congress’ recent action on the issue:

The problem with that is, of course, that the legislation 1) hasn’t passed: 2) doesn’t repeal DADT; and 3) no one, not even the Obama DOJ, can say when the discharges will end. DOJ notes, “The House and Senate bills contain identical language and are attached hereto Exhibits 1 and 2, respectively, for the Court’s convenience and review.” But, that ignores the Senate floor process where we know opponents of repeal intend to offer killer amendments. This brief reads like something a first-year law student wrote.

I find it interesting that the DOJ argues that the court should defer ruling in a case when the DOJ chooses to defend laws like DADT and DOMA when it’s not absolutely necessary to defend those laws.

But the real problem here is the opposite. I’ll grant that repeal certainly isn’t final and faces some substantial hurdles in the Senate, but those obstacles are hills compared to the mountains we’ll have to climb if the court upholds the policy. A court decision supporting the ban could energize not only conservative advocates but also the men of the military who have publicly embraced the President’s decision as a general concept, but seem very uncertain about the prospect of actually regulating DADT out of existence.

It’s those men — Gates, Mullen and the Chiefs — who are responsible for actually changing the military’s regulations in this regard and (given their already considerable foot dragging on the issue) it’s just not believable to say that a court decision will spring them into action. To some degree, the policy change will have to occur on their time table, like it or not. And the time table of the Murphy compromise, is something we could all probably (however grudgingly) live with.

Duncan Osborne has an article in Gay City News highlighting the remarkable enthusiasm gap between supporters of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and advocates for its repeal. While repeal groups spearheaded an impressive campaign micro targeting six swing senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee, “tight-wing groups that opposed repeal don’t appear to have worked very hard“:

“A number of Congressional offices have indicated that they have received very little grassroots calls, emails, faxes, etc., opposing repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” Christian A. Berle, director of the Washington office of the Log Cabin Republicans, wrote in an email. “This is a far cry from the vitriol that was being espoused by those opposing gay rights, when Congress debated open service in 1993.”[...]

The Alliance Defense Fund, Focus on the Family, the American Conservative Union, and the Center for Security Policy announced their opposition to repeal in a February 11 press event produced by the Center For Military Readiness, but these groups do not appear to have done more than that.

HRC began working with Servicemembers United last year to produce the Voices of Honor tour, which visited 50 cities and featured gay and straight veterans speaking in support of repeal. HRC generated 350,000 emails to members of Congress, sent nearly 30,000 letters or postcards, and made roughly 1,000 lobbying visits. [...]

Repeal supporters and opponents lobbied on dozens if not hundreds of issues, not just Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, during the first quarter of 2010, but the difference in resources spent is striking. On all the issues they lobbied on, repeal supporters spent $1.75 million while opponents spent just $125,000.

The lack of enthusiasm from the other side, the military leadership’s support for repeal, and the growing acceptance of gay people, raises the question of why opponents of the policy couldn’t secure a better deal or garner more “swing” votes. Some members, like House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), are still not comfortable with gay people. Others, like Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) are playing politics with repeal. There is certainly more blame to go around, and the White House probably deserves some of it. But given these spending numbers, the frustration over the delay in actually repealing the measure is certainly understandable.

The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue has issued a press release condemning Lady Gaga’s music video for her new single Alejandro. Donohue accuses Gaga of mimicking Madonna and criticizes the singer for “abusing Catholic symbols,” and “bleating out ‘Alejandro’ enough times to induce vomit.” The always tolerant Donahue then invites Gaga to return to her Catholic roots, but notes — in a somewhat bizarre editorial comment — that Gaga should treat Catholics like Muslims:

Like Madonna, Lady Gaga was raised Catholic and then morphed into something unrecognizable. “So I suppose you could say I’m a quite religious woman that is very confused about religion,” she told Larry King last week.

That she is confused is an understatement. In any event, we hope she finds her way back home. In the meantime, Catholics will settle for her treating us like Muslims.

Donohue has long believed that Christianity is superior to Islam and has often criticized American culture for equating the two. In 2007, Donohue protested New York City’s first Arabic-themed public school “on the grounds that it’s affording some people more religious freedom than others.” Donohue complained, ” Muslims just got off the plane and they’ve got an opportunity to put up their religious symbol, the Islamic Star and Crescent.” Donohue also criticized the movie “2012″ for not blowing up Muslim symbols at the same frequency as Catholic symbols, and suggested that “Muslims killing Christians in Nigeria is far, far worse than Christians killing Muslims in Nigeria.”

Interestingly, Steven Klein — the director of Gaga’s Alejandro video — has already responded to the furor surrounding the clip. “The religious symbolism is not meant to denote anything negative, but represents the character’s battle between the dark forces of this world and the spiritual salvation of the Soul,” he said. “Thus at the end of the film, she chooses to be a nun, and the reason her mouth and eyes disappear is because she is withdrawing her senses from the world of evil and going inward towards prayer and contemplation.”

Proving that the opposition to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) is rooted in homophobia rather than legitimate concerns about military readiness or unit cohesion, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) told reporters yesterday that the military should keep the policy intact “in part to avoid parents having to talk to their children about homosexuality“:

According to the Associated Press, Skelton told reporters that repeal of the policy could put families in a difficult position because it could prompt children to ask about homosexuality.

“What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” he asked.

Skelton, one of the 26 Democrats who opposed repeal in the House, added that his “biggest concern are the families.”

Skelton also said yesterday that he will continue opposing repeal, even though his constituents don’t care about gays openly serving in the military. “I was everywhere in my district, everywhere. It just wasn’t raised,” Skelton said. “There are other things on people’s minds, like jobs and the economy.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), who supports the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy and has promised to oppose any efforts to repeal it, is telling reporters that his constituents don’t care about gays openly serving in the military:

“I was everywhere in my district, everywhere. It just wasn’t raised,” Skelton said. “There are other things on people’s minds, like jobs and the economy.”

Nevertheless, he pledged to continue to oppose repealing the 1993 legislative language, of which he was the original sponsor, despite the fact that a large majority of Congress has voted to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military. “I oppose it, period,” he said.

Not only is Skelton not talking to his voters about his crusade to preserve the ban, he’s not talking to the military people his committee represents, either.

The point , of course, is that outside of a small vocal group of opponents, soldiers don’t care either. A poll of military personnel released in March found that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.” The poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Sixty-percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties” and 73% say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.”

If his constituents don’t care about gays in the military and most soldiers don’t think a members’ sexuality affects their performance, then why is Skelton so concerned?

In a very eloquent editorial in today’s Washington Post, CAP President and CEO John Podesta and Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, announce that they will “co-chair the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights,” the foundation that helped launch the lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 in California. Closing arguments are scheduled for next week, June 16, but the case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court regardless of the decision.

Levy and Podesta contend that their partnership has little to do with the political optics of bipartisanship; rather it’s rooted in their support for “the principle of equality before the law”:

Although we serve, respectively, as president of a progressive and chairman of a libertarian think tank, we are not joining the foundation’s advisory board to present a “bipartisan” front. Rather, we have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation’s character. This is not about politics; it’s about an indispensable right vested in all Americans.

Over more than two centuries, minorities in America have gradually experienced greater freedom and been subjected to fewer discriminatory laws. But that process unfolded with great difficulty.

As the country evolved, the meaning of one small word — “all” — has evolved as well. Our nation’s Founders reaffirmed in the Declaration of Independence the self-evident truth that “all Men are created equal,” and our Pledge of Allegiance concludes with the simple and definitive words “liberty and justice for all.” Still, we have struggled mightily since our independence, often through our courts, to ensure that liberty and justice is truly available to all Americans.

The Courts have led the way in aligning American policies to “the principle of equality before the law,” overruling legislative bans against interracial marriage in 1967′s Loving v. Virginia, and protecting minority rights from the tyranny of the majority. “Indeed, the Supreme Court issued its Loving ruling in the face of widespread opposition,” Podesta and Levy write. “A Gallup poll taken within months of the decision found that 74 percent of the American public ‘disapproved’ of interracial marriage. Nevertheless, the court vindicated those constitutional rights to which every American is entitled.” Public support for gay marriage is far stronger. According to a Gallup Poll released in May of 2010, 44% support legalizing same-sex marriage, while 53% oppose it. The opposition “tied with the lowest rate ever measured by Gallup, from 2007.”

Levy and Podesta conclude, “The decision in Perry depends, of course, on values far more permanent and important than opinion polls. No less than the constitutional rights of millions of Americans are at stake. But the public appears to be catching up with the Constitution. Just a little more leadership from the courts would be the perfect prescription for a free society.”

Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it is henceforth going to “require grant applicants seeking HUD funding to comply with state and local anti-discrimination laws that protect lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.” Previously, HUD had required grant applicants to comply with fair housing and civil rights law, but this change explicitly ensures that those seeking HUD money follow laws protecting LGBT individuals:

“We‘re using every avenue to shut the door against discrimination,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “Today, we take an important step to insist that those who seek federal funding must demonstrate that they are meeting local and state civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

HUD also “intends to propose new regulations that will clarify that the term ‘family’ as used to describe eligible beneficiaries of HUD’s programs include otherwise eligible LGBT individuals and couples.”

Today, more than 20 states, as well as the District of Columbia, offer protection due to sexual orientation. And this is warranted because, as Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, has pointed out, “studies have documented that when test callers described themselves as gay or lesbian, apartments were more likely to be described as unavailable. Testers who presented as homosexual received fewer call-backs and fewer invitations to pursue the property than their heterosexual counterparts.”

According to a 2007 study by the Michigan Fair Housing Centers, “same-sex couples were shown less desirable properties, were quoted higher rent prices, received less favorable customer service, or encountered outright refusal to sell or rent properties. There were also circumstances during which parties suffered verbal harassment from landlords, realtors, and lenders.”

While HUD’s change is a welcome step, Congress could also be doing more to ensure that fair housing standards extend to LGBT individuals. As Shanna Smith, President of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said, “we must see a serious commitment from Congress and the Administration to enforce the [Fair Housing] Act in a systemic way rather than allowing individual case files to gather dust. Existing laws must be enforced, and they must be strengthened to include sexual orientation, gender identity and source of income.”

A review of 178 health facilities finds that relatively few institutions have adopted equal access practices toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, a situation that’s likely to change with President Obama’s April memorandum instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to develop regulations requiring all hospitals that receive federal Medicare and Medicaid funding to end discrimination in hospital visitation.

According to the report, released today by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, only a small number of major hospital chains are currently offering equal benefits to LGBT people:

The HEI 2010 rates 178 facilities on four measures of equality: patient nondiscrimination, visitation, cultural competency training and employment nondiscrimination.

Only a handful of facilities achieved credit for each of these measures. However, there were some important bright spots. We are pleased to recognize Kaiser Permanente Network as the HEI’s first top-performing network of hospitals.

This report also includes the review of a representative sample of 200 of the largest healthcare facilities nationwide, which found that 93 percent fail to protect all LGBT patients from discrimination by not including “gender identity” in their patient non-discrimination policies. More than 40 percent do not include “sexual orientation” in these policies.

While HHS is still drafting the rules and regulations to implement Obama’s memo, the Joint Commission (the organization which accredits hospitals nationwide) has announced new inclusive non-discrimination standards as part of their accreditation process and HRC has launched a campaign encouraging states to adopt the new regulation.

Still, even with the new guidelines, LGBT people won’t experience full equality within the health care system and many advocates believe the administration should have done more to address these concerns. For instance, the final version of the health care law omitted House-backed provisions that would have ended “the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits,” designated “LGBT people as a health disparities population,” allowed “states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs” and prohibited “consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care.” The administration never publicly encouraged the Senate to adopt these measures.

Thousands of parties petition the Supreme Court to review their case, although the justices generally hear only about 60-80 cases a year.  So as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan would have written literally hundreds of memos to her boss advising him on whether to grant or deny these petitions.  Of these hundreds of memos, the right-wing Federalist Society chose to post exactly five of them on its website.

By what could only be an amazing coincidence, CBS News’ legal correspondent Jan Crawford selected four of the same five memos as the basis of a report Thursday night. According to Crawford:

Taken together, these documents will be much harder for her to explain away than other, less controversial papers unearthed before her confirmation hearings for Solicitor General. . . . The documents seem to show that Kagan had some pretty strong legal views of her own, and while that might encourage liberals, it’s going to give Republicans a lot more ammunition to fight against her.

Watch it:

As if to prove Crawford’s point, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) responded almost immediately to Crawford’s report with a statement claiming that “Kagan’s memos unambiguously express a leftist philosophy and an approach to the law that seems more concerned with achieving a desired social result than fairly following the Constitution,” and Sessions posted Crawford’s report to his YouTube channel.

These kinds of obviously coordinated attacks are nothing new, but the Fed-Soc/Crawford/Sessions hit on Kagan isn’t just a team effort, it’s also dead wrong.  Literally none of the memos cited in Crawford’s report mean what she says they mean.

• Abortion

The first memo cited in Crawford’s report is one recommending that Marshall deny review of a case holding that prisoners have a constitutional right to state funded, “purely elective” abortions.  Crawford presents the memo as evidence that Kagan’s views on abortion are somehow subject to attack from the right, but if Crawford had actually bothered to read the memo, she would have come to a very different conclusion.  Here is Kagan’s legal analysis of the decision subject to review:

Quite honestly, I think that although all of this decision is well-intentioned, parts of it are ludicrous. Since elective abortions are not medically necessary, I cannot see how denial of such abortions is a breach of the Eighth Amendment obligation to provide prisoners with needed medical care. And given that non-prisoners have no rights to funding for abortions, I do not see why prisoners should have such rights.

One baffles at how Crawford could present Kagan as too pro-choice based on this harsh view of the prisoner’s claim.

• School Segregation Read more

In April, the Senate passed a resolution condemning Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009,” which would impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for some homosexual acts, require people to report every LGBT individual they know, and criminalize renting property to gay men and women. The Family, a secretive American Evangelical group, helped introduce the legislation and has “poured millions of dollars” to prop up the country’s “religious leaders,” many of whom have been central to crafting the anti-gay measure.

But now, Joe Jervis of the blog Joe.My.God has discovered that another religious group, the anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC), spent “$25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute homosexuals.” While the group’s efforts failed to stop the Senate bill, they may have succeeded in slowing down the House version, which “remains languishing in the House almost four months after being referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Jervis notes.

The extent of FRC’s influence, however, is unclear. The measure has been widely condemned around the world, from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to federal lawmakers of both parties in the United States. Republican senators Tom Coburn (OK) and Susan Collins (ME) both co-sponsored the Senate resolution and “five Republican representatives – Chris Smith, Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts, Trent Franks and Anh “Joseph” Cao –” wrote a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Mouseveni urging him to do everything within his constitutional authority to stop the legislation. Smith’s involvement is particularly significant, since he has been a prominent FRC ally and has accepted $4,000 from the group in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles.

FRC’s support for the measure places it on the radical fringe of the political spectrum and out of sync with other religious groups. Many American Christian leaders have come out against the law, including prominent Evangelicals like Pastor Rick Warren. In late December of last year, Warren called on Ugandan pastors to oppose the law, but only after facing intense criticism for saying it wasn’t his “personal calling” to “comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.”

In February, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni formed a review committee “in response to international scrutiny.” Last month, the panel — which does not have final word — recommended that the measure be withdrawn.

Peter Moskos — the son of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ founder Charles Moskos — writes in today’s Washington Post that the military’s support for repealing the ban on openly gay service would have convinced his late father, who came up with the now infamous compromise in the 1990s, to come out for repeal as well:

Today, 17 years later, I am convinced that my late father would support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But to understand why he would embrace this change, one needs to understand the nuances of his support for the law in the first place — and his love for the military and the enlisted man in particular. [...] My father was no homophobe; he had nothing against gay people. He didn’t care if gay men hit on him but noticed how rarely it happened (“they don’t like fat ugly guys like me anyway”). He just didn’t want to get naked in front of people he knew were gay. He always shifted the argument away from sexual orientation and toward issues of privacy. Perhaps it was generational, but my father believed in something that seems quaintly old-fashioned today: sexual modesty. [...]

Before my father died in 2008, I asked him to reverse his support for the law. “Be on the right side of history,” I said. I also appealed to the newshound in him, “Just think of all the press you’ll get!” He did like the idea of one last hurrah, but he would not turn his back on the military. His continued commitment to “don’t ask, don’t tell” was exactly as deep as the military’s continued support.

And now the brass is shifting. A few months ago, Gen. Colin Powell, one of the law’s original supporters, reversed his position and came out against “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Powell would have likely asked for my father’s support. And my father wouldn’t say no to Gen. Powell.

Peter’s claim that his father supported DADT on ‘privacy’ grounds is somewhat significant, since Charles Moskos often shrouded his support for DADT in terms of military effectiveness and military cohesion and used his impressive academic credentials as a “cover” for his religious and moralistic views. (In the same way that FRC still releases ‘studies’ arguing that open gay service would undermine the military to obscure their moralistic agenda.)

In his seminal study of DADT, Nathaniel Frank argues that Moskos’ opposition was — as Peter suggests — actually rooted in a very conservative outlook on culture and morality. “Moskos shared with top military brass a traditional world-view that placed men, and a form of rugged masculinity, in positions of social power,” Frank explains. “For Moskos, the ban on openly gay soldiers was grounded in a similar cultural concern to the one raised by women in combat. Involving the analogy of sex integration, he asserted that the gay ban was necessary to protect ‘modesty rights for straights.” As a sociologist, Moskos felt that “he was simply articulating the truth of national sentiment and linking it to concerns about what impact a radical change in military culture could have on the armed forces.”

That said, Moskos’ concern about privacy is an entirely different issue that hasn’t diminished with the military’s new-found support for repeal. In fact, military leaders still argue that they need more time to figure out where and how to house openly gay troops. Concerns remain — will the partners of gay and lesbian service members be permitted to share on-base housing or can service members in small living quarters request to change their housing situation if they are uncomfortable living with an openly gay service member — but the experiences of our foreign allies (many of whom have lifted the ban against open service and have not had to provide for separate housing or shower accommodations) suggest that the privacy argument is overblown. A small vocal group of soldiers may feel uncomfortable around gays, but most soldiers simply don’t care.

Larry Korb points out in this report, that “today tens of thousands of gay men and women whose sexual orientation is already known to many of their fellow servicemen and women are already serving with no negative effect on military readiness.” As Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted during his testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee in February, “I have served with homosexuals since 1968… everybody in the military has.”

Although the Roberts Court’s egregious Citizens United decision gives wealthy corporations a free hand to spend unlimited money influencing elections, it still permits Congress to “regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements.” Accordingly, Congress is now considering a bill known as the DISCLOSE Act, which requires corporations and unions to disclose who is funding their electioneering campaigns so that the American people at least have some idea who is buying elected officials.

Predictably, conservative interest groups widely oppose the bill, and they have responded to it with an equally predictable tactic: demonizing unions. The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page warns that the bill “abandons the longstanding policy of treating unions and businesses equally.” The American Conservative Union labels this so-called exemption for unions “a blatant partisan move.” House Republicans labeled the bill the “Democrats’ union bailout.”

Had any of these right-wing sources actually bothered to read the bill, they would have learned that this attack is false. Page 40 of the bill specifically states that “[a]ny labor organization” is covered by the bill’s provisions governing donor disclosure.

Hilariously, the Chamber of Commerce responds to this clear language not by admitting that the bill applies to unions after all, but by complaining that unions will still be exempt because they don’t take in enough money:

The legislation would require corporations and labor unions to report donors who have given as little as $600 during the year. Because an average union member pays annual dues far beneath that threshold, most unions would not be required to disclose their donors even when they spend millions of dollars on political advertising.

The blanket restrictions on political participation by government contractors are effectively inapplicable to unions. The legislation, as amended in committee, would prohibit many government contractors from making any independent expenditures or funding any electioneering communications if the contractor has a government contract valued at $7,000,000 or more. Although a number of unions hold government contracts, few -– if any -– hold contracts that reach that amount.

Essentially, the Chamber is arguing that there is no difference between a mine worker who writes a small-dollar check to a union campaign to elect their preferred candidate, and a mining CEO who spends millions of dollars to fill the government with friendly lawmakers and judges. But this is absurd. The reason why the DISCLOSE Act exempts small-dollar donors is not to enact some absurd “union bailout,” it is because individual small-dollar donors have an insignificant influence on elections (although they combined donations can be significant), while large-dollar donors can actually change the course of an election if they are willing to dump enough money into a race.

Moreover, it is equally absurd to claim that unions are capable of competing financially with corporations, even if you combine all of their members’ small-dollar contributions. According to the AFL-CIO’s 2009 financial disclosure form (available here), the AFL-CIO’s national headquarters had less than $83 million in total assets. By contrast, BP earned over $10 billion in profits in a single quarter, and that’s just one of many wealthy corporations who have an interest in shaping US elections.

The Chamber’s objection really has nothing to do with unions.  Small companies which earn “only” $6 million in government contracts are also exempt from the relevant parts of the DISCLOSE Act.  In reality, the Chamber is just upset that Americans may find out who funds their shady electioneering campaigns.