Justice Tom Parker (center) poses with the leaders of two hate groups

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, a disciple of disgraced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, released a campaign ad comparing the judge who recently struck down the unconstitutional Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to Al-Qaeda:

Recently, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordered a worldwide injunction to overturn the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy on homosexuals serving in the military.  With a stroke of a pen, this Clinton appointed judge—who got her law degree at Berkeley—unilaterally made the biggest single change in military policy in American history. . . . Most people believe that Al-Qaeda is one of America’s biggest security threats, I think it’s time to add liberal activist judges like Judge Phillips to that list.

Listen:

Parker’s hyperbolic claim about American history would come as a big surprise to the actual framers of the Constitution, who generally shared the view that the mere existance of a permanent standing army invites tyranny, but this kind of absurd and bigoted rhetoric is nothing new for Justice Parker. The picture above depicts Parker with two local hate group leaders.  One is Leonard Wilson, a segregationist and national board member of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens that has described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity.”  The other is Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

(As the Wonk Room recently explained, Parker is not the only candidate with ties to the League.  Martha Dean, the GOP nominee for Connecticut Attorney General, is apparently taking cues from one of the League’s co-founders, right-wing pseudo-historian Tom Woods.)

Nor is Parker’s radicalism limited to hatred towards gay men, lesbians or other minority groups.  In a op-ed published during his tenure as a justice, Parker attacked his colleagues for “passively accommodat[ing] — rather than actively resist[ing] — the unconstitutional opinion of five liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”  The same op-ed elaborated that he objects to the U.S. Supreme Court because they look down on “pro-family policies” and “Southern heritage.”

Conservative military chaplains have opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so frequently and vociferously this year that I’ve devoted an entire tag to explaining why their warnings of a mass exodus of Christian chaplains and soliders is overblown. But their frequent outings (pun intended) didn’t stop the Associated Press from running a story detailing their latest stunt. Titled, “Retired chaplains warn against ‘don’t ask’ repeal” the article breathlessly reports on a letter the chaplains sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, regurgitating the very same claims the chaplains have been making all year — only now, they’re standing on the AP’s soap box rather than in the event room of Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council. From the AP story:

Dozens of retired military chaplains say that serving both God and the U.S. armed forces will become impossible for chaplains whose faiths consider homosexuality a sin if the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is thrown out.

If a chaplain preaches against homosexuality, he could conceivably be disciplined as a bigot under the military’s nondiscrimination policy, the retired chaplains say. The Pentagon, however, says chaplains’ religious beliefs and their need to express them will be respected.

Clergy would be ineligible to serve as chaplains if their churches withdraw their endorsements, as some have threatened to do if “don’t ask, don’t tell” ends. Critics of allowing openly gay troops fear that clergy will leave the service or be forced to find other jobs in the military that don’t involve their faiths.

“The bottom line is religious freedom,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Lee, one of 65 former chaplains who signed a letter urging President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to keep “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In a recent Letter to the Editor published in USA Today, Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson — the first openly gay priest elected bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion — writes that this argument “raises needless fears based on a flawed understanding of the policies that govern the military chaplaincy.“

“These policies are designed to preserve and protect the free exercise of religion in the military and would remain in effect after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT),” he notes. “No Roman Catholic, fundamentalist Christian or Orthodox Jewish chaplain would have to change her or his beliefs about homosexuality. If any gay or lesbian servicemembers went to one of these chaplains, they would still receive the counseling against homosexuality they have always received. What they wouldn’t receive is a discharge from their military service for being gay and speaking about it.” “Within each chaplain’s congregation, he or she will continue to be free to preach according to the tenets of his or her own faith. That will not change,” he says.

Fortunately, many military chaplains support repealing the ban. “As military chaplains, we routinely work with service members whose faith traditions and belief systems are different from ours. The idea that repeal of DADT will infringe on our religious liberty is insulting to all the serving chaplains who professionally minister to and with people of diverse beliefs every day,” said Captain John F. Gundlach, a retired Chaplain of the U.S. Navy. HRC has more on the broad coalition of faith leaders who support repeal here.

Tonight, NBC News’ Richard Engel has learned some early results from the Pentagon’s Working Group study of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. According to military sources who have seen the report, a majority of American troops would either not object to serving alongside openly gay troops or would raise any concerns directly with their gay peers:

ENGEL: The findings are that for most soldiers, and this wasn’t the sum total of all soldiers, it wasn’t that big of a deal…The majority — the number one answer, first answer was ‘I don’t care.’ That’s significant.

MADDOW: Predominant answer is ‘no big deal.’

ENGEL: Most common, number one. Number two was, ‘I would deal directly with the person involved.’ So when you put the two of those together, it is the majority. Now, there were some people who said, three, they would go to the chain of command and some four, who hated it, hated it. But the answers one and two are considered positive. So these studies show a relative if not positive outlook, at least an accepting outlook.

MADDOW: So the military study is, as you said, the survey of the troops is part of it. It’s an overall study of the feasibility of the issue….this survey of the troops, what you’ve learned is that a majority of troops it’s not going to be a major deal.

ENGEL: Not a deal breaker, that they they’re not going to be running from the army in droves. A key thing this study kept coming back to is that it’s very important about the chain of command. What commanders say. How far commanders act. What tone they set. The marines were the most negative out of the services. They had the most people who were — with negative responses. And the marine corps leadership has taken a stance and has been very vocally against this issue. And the study found that most soldiers and sailors and all different service members follow a chain of command. So if the chain of command accepts this as the law, the data is that so will the soldiers.

Watch it:

The study, which Engel described as the ‘core’ of the Pentagon’s review, is particularly significant since moderate Republicans have pledged to listen to the troops before voting to repeal the policy. In fact, when Republican (and several Democrats) filibustered the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — the bill in which the amendment to repeal the ban is housed — most argued that their final vote would depend on the study. Now that the results seem positive, they should have no reason to oppose the measure:

– SEN. OLYMPIA SNOWE (R-ME): “We should all have the opportunity to review that [DADT] report which is to be completed on December 1, as we reevaluate this policy and the implementation of any new changes.”

– SEN. SCOTT BROWN (R-MA): “The Pentagon is still in the midst of its study of the matter, and its report is due in December…. I am keeping an open mind, but I do not support moving ahead until I am able to finish my review, the Pentagon completes its study, and we can be assured that a new policy can be implemented without jeopardizing the mission of our military.”

– SEN. GEROGE VOINOVICH (R-OH): “The DREAM Act deals with immigration and shouldn’t be on this bill. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is a controversial issue that needs to be debated on the Senate floor but I believe it would be logical to wait for the Department of Defense to issue its report on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

– SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): “I do not support the idea of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before our military members and commanders complete their review. This so-called compromise would repeal the legislation first then receive input from the military. This is not the proper way to change any policy, particularly something as controversial as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

– SEN. MARK PRYOR (D-AR): “Let’s let the military professionals work through their process. I’d hate to kind of short-circuit that with congressional action, so I’d rather let that occur before we start making policy here on ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

The final results are due the first week of December. Earlier today, Alex Nicholson of Servicemembers United outlined a strategy for how advocates could use the study to urge the Senate to repeal the policy in the lame duck session.

Servicemembers United’s Alex Nicholson — who attended Tuesday’s high-level meeting between President Obama and advocates of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — has laid out the group’s strategy for passing legislation to gradually repeal the policy during the lame duck session of the Senate. In a video published on YouTube, Nicholson stresses that advocates should lobby Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), President Obama, and moderate Republicans like Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME) and Richard Lugar (IN) to take up the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — in which the repeal amendment is housed — as soon as possible.

Given the time constraints and the tradition of Senate debate (senators will need about two weeks for floor debate and another two to conference the House and Senate versions of the bill), if the bill is not introduced before the Thanksgiving recess, Nicholson argues, “it’s possible in theory to still get it done, but the chances go down from 50 to 60% to 5 or 6%.”

His timeline looks something like this (calendar made by me):

Watch it:

Reid will be responsible for bringing up the NDAA during the lame duck session and should do so under open amendment rules. But the President also “has to get engaged in the process himself, personally and in a public way,” he adds. “The White House needs to do 3 or 4 times what it did in September or May. And the President has to be out there, making calls, doing press, sending his surrogates out, sending seniors, staff out, working Capitol Hill and actually showing that the White House has a serious stake in the Senate getting this done this year.”

One possible hiccup in the schedule is the Pentagon Working Group study, scheduled to come out on December 1st. Nicholson notes that a number of Senators — Brown, Voinovich, Lincoln, and Pryor — have argued that they preferred to wait for the results before voting on repeal but argues that “they need to realize that the final vote will take place way before the study is do on December 1.” “So they’ll have have ample of opportunity to see its conclusions and recommendations and make final decisions after it comes out,” he says.

David Bahatai, the Ugandan Member of Parliament behind the country’s controversial anti-gay legislation, told CNN International today that he is “confident” that the law will move forward, dispersing hopes that that the bill was shelved in response to wide-spread international pressure and condemnation. The Ugandan bill, which was introduced last year, would impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for some homosexual acts (which are already illegal), require people to report every LGBT individual they know, and criminalize so-called LGBT advocacy.

BAHATAI: Every single day of my life now I am still pushing that it passes…Lord has given us different freedoms, our democracies given us different freedoms, but I don’t think anybody has a freedom to commit a crime and we think homosexuality in our country is a crime. It’s criminal. [...]

We are very confident, because this is a piece of legislation that is needed in this country to protect the traditional family here in Africa, and also protect the future of our children.

Watch it:

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni “has encouraged his ruling National Resistance Movement Party to overturn the death sentence provision” and the Ugandan Cabinet is reportedly making changes to the legislation. Earlier this month, however, Jeff Sharlet, author of the bestseller The Family, reported that Bahati “is now being promised a second reading,” noting that the bill has started moving again just as the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone published photographs of what it called Uganda’s “top” 100 gays, alongside yellow banner that read “Hang Them.” The CNN International report noted that four gay people have been attacked since. “I think this new step in the press is a very alarming one, because it shows it moving right back to the forefront of Ugandan society,” Sharlet remarked.

Some on the religious far right — most prominently the secretive group The Family, also known as the Fellowship — initially promoted the Ugandan measure, but backed away from the bill in the wake of the international controversy. At least that’s what they’re saying publicly. According to Bahati, “The many friends that we have, especially the evangelicals, in America, when we speak to them privately, they do support us. They encourage us. But they are in a society that is very hostile, and we appreciate that.”

Bahati himself first began his political career in the United States where he “studied at the Leadership Institute, the conservative grassroots political organizing institute,” developed a close relationship with Mitch McConnell and John Ensign “and then they put him in touch with the Family, and he started making those connections.”

In April, Republican senators Tom Coburn (OK) and Susan Collins (ME) co-sponsored a Senate resolution condemning the bill and “five Republican representatives -– Chris Smith, Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts, Trent Franks and Anh “Joseph” Cao — wrote a letter to the Ugandan President urging him to do everything within his constitutional authority to stop the legislation. (H/T: Pink News)

The Iowa Independent’s Lynda Waddington caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at the so-called “Judge Bus” tour — a campaign urging Iowa voters to oust three Iowa Supreme Court judges who overturned an Iowa statute banning same-sex marriage in April 2009. King has long argued that judges shouldn’t “legislate” from the bench, and said that he feared the Court’s decision would turn Iowa into a “gay marriage Mecca.” Yesterday, at a bus stop in Cedar Rapids, IA, he told Waddington that if conservatives don’t restrict marriage to one man and one woman, children will be taken away from their parents and to be raised in warehouses:

“I think that if we can’t defend marriage, that it becomes very hard to defend life,” King said. “Marriage is the crucible by which we pour all of our values and pass them on to our children, and that is how the culture is renewed each time. So, if we lose marriage — for instance, if our children are raised in warehouses, so to speak. There have been civilizations that have tried to do that. The Spartans did that. They took the children away and taught them to be warriors. It’s a good way to defend a country, but not much of a way to run a civilization.

“So, I’m afraid if that happened — if we lose the marriage, we lose the home, we lose the nuclear family then we can’t teach our values. We won’t be able to teach our faith. We won’t be able to teach life. We won’t be able to teach our Constitutional values either. That’s why I’m afraid it’s going to be very, very difficult to defend life.”

Interestingly, none of the five states and one district (including Iowa) that have expanded marriage have constructed child-only warehouses and all of the research about same-sex parents suggests that their families are very similar to those with different sex parents. A recent IowaWatch study found that similarities range from the way men and women often view marriage to the more mundane tasks of married life, such as doing yard work. “Like people in traditional marriages, same-sex couples also talk about raising children and shielding them from the verbal slings of peers, the stability and unit-strength of a family and the value of loving relationships among parents and children, as well as legal necessities and financial security,” the study found.

For more on King’s lost history of bigotry, click here. (H/T: Right Wing Watch)

During last night’s Illinois Senate debate, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) — a Naval Reserve officer — said that he had not served alongside any gay servicemembers during his 21-years in the military, but suggested that he may be open to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if the Pentagon’s Working Group study showed that reversing the ban would have no adverse consequences.

Kirk stressed that the the ban must be replaced with a new policy after it’s repealed:

KIRK: I think we should wait for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to report as they’re scheduled to in September. This was actually the recommendation of Secretary Gates and the President, but speaker Pelosi wanted to move forward anyway. The problem here is that when you remove the policy, you got to have a new policy….I’m going to read every word of that study. [...]

MODERATOR: Do you know any gay people in the military?

KIRK: I don’t, not openly.

Watch it:

Under the current compromise amendment, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will remain in place until President Obama, the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff review the Pentagon’s study and certify that repeal is “consistent with the military’s standards of readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion and recruitment and retention.” The public will have 60 days to review the report before the ban is officially lifted and repeal advocates also expect that the president will institute a non-discrimination policy in its place.

Interestingly, prominent generals — like Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and General David Petraeus — who have admitted to serving alongside gay servicemembers are actually more supportive of repealing the ban than Kirk. As Mullen put it, “I have served with homosexuals since 1968….Everybody in the military has, and we understand that. So it is a number of things which cumulatively for me, personally, get me to this position.”

Petraeus also said, “after the ten seconds of awareness wore off, the focus was on the professional attributes of these individuals. So given, again, standards of personal conduct, focus on human behavior, a focus on proper implementation, you know, I think that this is something that can be worked through, frankly.”

During a first-of-its-kind sit down with progressive bloggers at the White House this afternoon, President Obama told AmericaBlog’s Joe Sudbay that he didn’t think the LGBT community’s “disillusionment and disappointment” in his approach to issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was justified, saying “I guess my attitude is that we have been as vocal, as supportive of the LGBT community as any President in history.”

Speaking directly to the DADT issue, Obama reiterated that the policy “is not just harmful to the brave men and women who are serving…but it doesn’t serve our interests.” “I think that the best way to overturn it is for Congress to act,” he insisted, revealing that he asked Log Cabin Republicans’ executive director R. Clarke Cooper, who attended yesterday’s top level meeting about ending the ban, to “Get me those votes.” After district court judge Virginia Phillips ruled the ban unconstitutional and barred the Pentagon from enforcing the policy, LGBT advocates urged Obama to agree with her interpretation of the law and refuse to appeal her decision. The administration, however, is asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the injunction and reverse the ruling, insisting that it was bound to defend existing law.

During the sit down, Obama avoided Sudbay’s question about the constitutionality of the policy since “I’m not sitting on the Supreme Court,” he said. “And I’ve got to be careful, as President of the United States, to make sure that when I’m making pronouncements about laws that Congress passed I don’t do so just off the top of my head.” But he also hinted that he understood the community’s frustration with the pace of change, recalling how African American civil rights leaders responded to similar arguments about “patience and time”:

Now, I say that as somebody who appreciates that the LGBT community very legitimately feels these issues in very personal terms. So it’s not my place to counsel patience. One of my favorite pieces of literature is “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Dr. King had to battle people counseling patience and time. And he rightly said that time is neutral. And things don’t automatically get better unless people push to try to get things better.

So I don’t begrudge the LGBT community pushing, but the flip side of it is that this notion somehow that this administration has been a source of disappointment to the LGBT community, as opposed to a stalwart ally of the LGBT community, I think is wrong.

Responding to Sudbay’s question about the growing support for same-sex marriage, Obama reiterated his belief in civil unions but conceded that “attitudes evolve, including mine.” “And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about…while I’m not prepared to reverse myself here, sitting in the Roosevelt Room at 3:30 in the afternoon, I think it’s fair to say that it’s something that I think a lot about,” he said.

For a full transcript of Obama’s remarks, click here.

A handful of conservative “family values” organizations have embarked on a bus tour across Iowa, urging voters to oust three Iowa Supreme Court judges who overturned an Iowa statute banning same-sex marriage in April 2009. Prominent Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have endorsed the campaign and Reps. Steven King (R-IA) and Louis Gohmert (R-TX) are making personal appearances on tour. Santorum is expected to also join the bus later this week.

And while the politicians enveloped their opposition to same-sex marriage in democracy — allowing Iowans to vote on the issue — Arisha Michelle Hatch of Prop 8 Trial Tracker got a better taste of the kind of constituency this whose-who of conservative politics is attracting. As it turns out, the relatively small crowds have no qualms about “revealing their views on man/animal marriage, disease-carrying nasty gays, and sodomy-marriage.” Below are some highlights:

RON: “[Gay people] don’t do anything for society. They’re only a drain on society, so much so that the medical profession recognizes that they’re a disease carrying nasty threat to society and are not allowed to donate blood. That’s my position.”

DAVE: “Can I marry your camera? I mean, I really like cameras. I love cameras. Okay? Can I marry my camera? …Triangles and squares, round pegs and square pegs, man and woman, okay?…Why not marry goats, why not marry my camera…”

DON: “Sodomy causes AIDS, okay? And AIDS is a serious problem in this nation as well as around the world.

Watch it:

As of October 4th, the Iowa Poll found that “44 percent of Iowans who plan to vote in the election say they’ll vote ‘yes’ [to retain] to all three justices. Forty percent will vote to remove the judges, while 16 percent say they want to retain some.”

In April 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously upheld a District Court’s ruling that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman “violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.” “We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective,” Justice Mark S. Cady wrote for the Iowa court. “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that President Obama has appointed upwards of 150 openly gay officials less than half way through his first term in office, surpassing “the previous high of about 140 reached during two full terms under President Bill Clinton.” Shin Inouye, a spokesperson for Obama said the president “is proud that his appointments reflect the diversity of the American public.” “He is committed to appointing highly qualified individuals for each post,” Inouye said. “We have made a record number of openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) appointments and we are confident that this number will only continue to grow.”

For some, that may prove to be too much to handle, however. Today, KTBB AM600 host Garth Maier in Tyler, Texas responded to the AP report by asking his radio listeners and the morning show viewers of a local NBC affiliate if “the acceptance of homosexuality, pushed hard by the gay rights activists, will it be the fall of this country?“:

BOB BRACKEEN: A record number of openly gay appointees in the Obama administration. And there are other gay men and women who perhaps wish to keep their lives secret who also are in the Obama administration, perhaps as judges as well. [...]

GARTH MAIER: President Obama very aggressive with his appointment of homosexuals. Christian conservatives of course criticizing Obama for upholding what is considered by many an immoral lifestyle….What do you think, the acceptance of homosexuality, pushed hard by the gay rights activists, will it be the fall of this country? [...]

CALLER 1: We know that there are more gays in Washington, DC than there is in San Francisco or Southern Florida or anywhere in this nation. There are double, trust me, three times as many gays in Washington, DC than there is in San Francisco. So if he hired a bunch of them, probably because all anyone was there to work. So you need help, you need help! [...]

CALLER 2: I think the whole issue of homosexuality is overblown. We seem to be so conscious about being politically correct. According to most of the statistics homosexuals occupy just 7% of the population, so why do we spend 30% of our time talking about it? [...]

MAIER: Will the acceptance of homosexuality in this society be the downfall of America?….Will it be that destroys American society as we know it right now? You see it everywhere accepted at every level and certainly in the entertainment industry since the late 1980s, all over, gay characters in television shows, in the movies, so on and so forth. [...]

BRACKEEN: Again, the last caller, hit the nail on the head, Garth. Obviously the mainstream media, Hollywood caters to less than 10% of the population. They have a very strong voice in this country. Politically and in pop culture as well.

Watch it:

Maier has a history of anti-gay remarks and innuendo. During Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court, for instance, Maier reported “there have been numerous question about her own sexuality” and asked, “does it matter to you?” “Considering perhaps a justice on the high court, being a homosexual. Does the sexual orientation of a Supreme Court nominee matter to you?” “I’m curious to see if any of the conservatives will raise questions about her orientation and see if she’ll answer questions about it,” he added.

Calls to KTBB and Maier were not immediately returned.

Marc Felion of FeastForFun.com catches Wisconsin’s Lt. Governor candidate Rebecca Kleefisch in an unusual explanation for why gays and lesbians should be denied the right to marry. “We just don’t have the money to be giving out for extra benefits right now,” Kleefisch told WITI-TV’s ‘Real Milwaukee’ program, “It’s a fiscal back breaker”:

KLEEFISCH: I voted that way, I’m against gay marriage as well. I think that especially when it comes to $3 billion budget and it’s climbing. The legislative fiscal bureau announced about five days ago that we are actually $265 million dollars further in the hole than we expected to be this year. We just don’t have the money to be giving out for extra benefits right now. It’s a fiscal back breaker.

Watch it:

Kleefisch has made this argument before. “This doesn’t just have roots in the Bible, this has roots and fiscal common sense. We can’t at this point, afford to just be handing out money to anyone,” she said during an interview with WVCY radio. “This is a slippery slope in addition to that at what point are we going to okay marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this clock, can we marry dogs?”

Of course Kleefisch is wrong in her budgetary projections. As the Williams Institute has argued, allowing gay people to marry would actually boost state economies.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to say whether President Obama would be willing to use his stop-loss authority to end discharges under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should Congress fail to repeal the policy, telling the Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld “our efforts in the short term will be focused on the durable repeal of a law that the President thinks is unjust. And that’s where our focus will be.” Watch it:

Gibbs also addressed this afternoon’s meeting between LGBT advocates and the White House, telling the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson that administration officials will express their “desire to see the defense authorization bill pending before the Senate taken up.” “That includes a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, as the House has already voted on. The president wants the defense authorization act and that repeal passed,” Gibbs said. But when asked if the administration had pressured senators who voted against repeal last month to switch their votes, Gibbs admitted that it had not. “To my knowledge it has not taken place yet,” he said. “But the only way we’ll get something through the senate is to change the vote count and to move past — look, you’re going to have to get passed a promised filibuster and moving to the bill and certainly the only way we can move to the bill is to change some of those votes.”

Gibbs explained that advocates attending the meeting were told that they could not address the Justice Department’s ongoing defense of the policy before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because “some of the participants in the meeting are with groups that are in litigation at the plaintiff where the United States government is the defendant.” “I don’t think either side believes that those type of conversations about the litigation between two parties represented in a lawsuit is appropriate in the meeting,” he said.

“The president continues to believe that this is a law — that the time for the ending of this law has come. The courts are signaling that. And certainly it has been his political belief going back to when I first met him in 2004,” Gibbs added.

Responding to the growing number of LGBT teen suicides in recent weeks, the Obama administration announced today that “schools that don’t address the bullying of gay students may lose U.S. funds for not enforcing gender-discrimination laws.” In a first of its kind anti-bullying guidance distributed to some 15,000 school districts and colleges that receive federal funds, the Department of Education clarifies that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 “requires schools to take action against bullying—including gender-based and sexual harassment of LGBT students.”

“A school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known,” the memo instructs. “In all cases, schools should have well-publicized policies prohibiting harassment and procedures for reporting and resolving complaints that will alert the school to incidents of harassment.” The memo provides “hypothetical examples of how a school’s failure to recognize student misconduct as discriminatory harassment violates students’ civil rights” and describes “how the school should have responded in each circumstance.” Here is the example of LGBT bullying:

Although Title IX does not prohibit discrimination based solely on sexual orientation, Title IX does protect all students, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, from sex discrimination. When students are subjected to harassment on the basis of their LGBT status, they may also, as this example illustrates, be subjected to forms of sex discrimination prohibited under Title IX. The fact that the harassment includes anti-LGBT comments or is partly based on the target’s actual or perceived sexual orientation does not relieve a school of its obligation under Title IX to investigate and remedy overlapping sexual harassment or gender-based harassment. In this example, the harassing conduct was based in part on the student’s failure to act as some of his peers believed a boy should act. The harassment created a hostile environment that limited the student’s ability to participate in the school’s education program (e.g., access to the drama club). Finally, even though the student did not identify the harassment as sex discrimination, the school should have recognized that the student had been subjected to gender-based harassment covered by Title IX.
In this example, the school had an obligation to take immediate and effective action to eliminate the hostile environment.

“This is a wonderful first step as far as what the Department of Education is capable of doing with the existing laws, now we need that comprehensive law like the Safe Schools Improvement Act that gives more clarity to the states and the school district as to how they can address this problem,” Daryl Presgraves, Media Relations Manager of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) told me during a phone interview.

“The practice right now falls to the states to enact enact anti-bullying laws absent any sort of federal action which we are hopeful will happen in the future.” Currently, 45 states that have enacted anti-bullying legislation but only 10 have a law that protects students from bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A 2005 survey conducted by GLSEN found that these general laws do very little to prevent LGBT bullying, while “LGBT students who were covered by a comprehensive safe school policy that specifically protects sexual orientation were less likely to report being harassed at school, more likely to tell school officials when incidents of harassment occurred..and more than twice as likely to have a teacher intervene when harassment occurred versus students covered by a non-enumerated, or ‘generic,’ policy.” “Having a law that says don’t bully is great and feels good, but in practice, doesn’t necessary do a whole lot to address bullying in schools,” Presgraves added.

There are two pending pieces of federal legislation that would help enhance lax standards.. The Safe Schools Improvement Bill — sponsored by Representative Linda Sánchez (D-CA) in the House — would require schools and districts receiving federal funds “to adopt codes of conduct specifically prohibiting bullying and harassment, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.” Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) Student Non-Discrimination Act would prohibit discrimination in schools on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.

Presgraves said that the Obama administration is expanding on President Clinton’s interpretation of Title IX. “The Department of Justice under the Clinton administration, their interpretation of Title IX related to in some ways protections of bullying based off of sexual orientation and gender expression. The Bush administration did not intervene in cases or show their support in cases of students protected by Title IX based on sexual orientation and gender identity expression,” he said. “So what this essentially does is it goes back to the Clinton-era interpretation of the law and adds to it by putting out this clear message to schools.”

Yesterday, the Log Cabin Republicans, the group which won an injunction against enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell earlier this month from a federal judge in California, filed a response to the government’s emergency motion for a stay in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the Department of Justice has not shown that “it is likely to succeed on the merits on appeal, or that it would sustain irreparable injury if the district court’s judgment remains in place pending determination of this appeal.” The court of appeals can decide whether to lift its temporary stay of an injunction barring enforcement of DADT at any time.

“The emergency stay of injunction that the government requests would perpetuate this unconstitutional state of affairs with no countervailing benefit to the government that outweighs the deprivation of rights such a stay would entail,” the group argues, pointing out that the government has “not shown irreparable injury if a stay is denied”:

Much of the appellants’ motion is devoted to their claim that the military will be harmed if the district court’s injunction remains in place while the government appeals. The supposed harms identified in the motion, and enumerated in the Stanley Declaration, are all to the military’s institutional interests and its bureaucratic needs. But the injunction does not require the military to take any affirmative measures: it does not order the military to redesign its barracks, to retool its pay scales or benefits, to re-ordain its chaplains, to rewrite its already extensive anti-harassment or “dignity and respect” rules, or anything else. Nor does it prevent the military from undertaking the acts appellants now claim it must do if DADT is enjoined – revising policies, preparing educational and training materials, and the lie. The district court’s injunction requires only one thing: to cease investigating and discharging honorable, patriotic, brave fighting men and women for reasons unrelated to their performance and military ability. [...]

The supposed “injury” to the military that the government claims would result from the district court’s injunction is, by the government’s own account, entirely a matter of rewriting handbooks and personnel manuals, developing training and “education” materials, reassuring serving personnel that their “views, concerns, and perspectives” are valued, and the like. These activities are not “irreparable injury” of the type that the test for a stay contemplates. Moreover, the government has known since June 2009, when the district court set this case for trial, that it might lose and have to adjust its policies accordingly. By contrast, the injury to Log Cabin’s members and to all American servicemembers from granting a stay is both immediate and truly irreparable, in a Constitutional sense, as the following section shows.

Also yesterday, four other LGBT groups including Servicemembers United, SLDN, the Palm Center and Lambada Legal filed amicus briefs urging the court should allow Judge Phillips’ injunction to stand until the case comes to appeal early next year. Interestingly, Lambda Legal’s brief argues that DADT’s discriminatory message is particularly damaging to lesbian, gay and bisexual youth, as exemplified by the surge of recently-reported teen suicides caused by antigay bullying. “The government cannot plausibly claim that its actions are unrelated to such tragedies and abuses, so long as it remains the nation’s leading model for open discrimination against LGB people,” it says.

Weeks after 18-year-old Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington bridge as a result of LGBT-related bullying, a bipartisan coalition of New Jersey lawmakers have introduced legislation “designed to combat harassment, intimidation and bullying among students.” The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights builds on New Jersey’s existing anti-bullying measure, passed in May of 2002, but advances stronger accountability standards and reporting requirements. From Blue Jersey:

Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-37) and Senator Barbara Buono (D-18) will introduce on Monday the eagerly anticipated harrassment, intimidation and bullying (HIB) awareness and prevention legislation. It is expected that it will have bipartisan support, including Assemblywoman Pat Angelini (R-11), and Senators Diane Allen (R-7) and Thomas Goodwin (R-14).

Their bill is squarely aimed at the school environment where discrimination and bullying often begin. It will provide that training on HIB be a part of the training required for public school teaching staff members in suicide prevention. It will create a fund for state grants to school districts. It will include sections on enforcement and response to HIB and on accountability of schools, districts and the state. It will also require the addition of an anti-bullying policy and enforcement mechanism to the student code of conduct of every public college and university.

Lawmakers first began crafting the legislation in 2008, and held numerous meeting with victims and advocates such as Garden State Equality, the Anti-Defamation League and the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention. The goal was to “create a standardized way to identify and investigate incidences of bullying and to train teachers, administrators and school board members in identification and prevention techniques” to reduce New Jersey’s bullying rate which is higher than the national average.

“This bill protects all students who are bullied, not just students bullied because they belong to a particular group that faces discrimination,” Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality told NJToday.net. “Given the painstaking year of work that went into this legislation, it should not be interpreted as a knee-jerk reaction to the tragic death of Tyler Clementi. Although New Jersey must respond to that – and this bill does.”

The legislation also “comes just weeks after New York state introduced a new law requiring New York school districts to protect children against bullying because of their sexual orientation or weight.” Currently, 45 other states have enacted anti-bullying measures, but advocates believe that most laws leave too much discretion to the schools and see the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights as a model for insuring compliance and accountability. For instance, the bill provides that “a school administrator who fails to initiate or conduct an investigation of an incident, or who should have known of an incident and fails to take action, is subject to discipline” and requires the Department of Education to “establish a formal protocol to be used by the offices of the executive county superintendent of schools in investigating complaints that school districts are not adhering to the provisions of law governing harassment, intimidation, or bullying in the schools.”

A spokes person for Gov. Chris Christie said “the administration would look at the bill if it’s passed – and given its bipartisan sponsors, that seems likely.” “While Christie hasn’t commented on the bill, he did express sympathy to Clementi’s parents and anger over the circumstances of the suicide,” the Washington Post notes.

Adam Serwer does a skillful job of debunking this fairly shocking editorial from the Washington Times that’s full of more gay baiting insinuations than I can count:

Pentagon officials have been pretending that they have not already made up their minds on this issue. Generals have issued blanket denials that the conclusions for the forthcoming working group report on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” have already been decided. It appears that as the White House rams its radical homosexual agenda through the military, too many generals and admirals are willing to sell their brothers in arms down the river if it means they can keep a shiny set of stars on their epaulets.

The destructive force unleashed by the Pentagon’s collaboration with the leftist agenda is apparent from the circus created when homosexual activists like Dan Choi sashayed over to the Times Square recruiting center to make a political point in the short period in which the Phillips order was effective. Leftists are only interested in political points and symbolism here. Providing defense to the nation in the most effective way possible is the furthest thing from their mind. Treating military recruitment primarily as a diversity issue opens up a closet full of absurdities. On what basis, then, would the military discriminate against the elderly? Why can’t grandpa become a paratrooper? Should the military not reject someone merely because he is handicapped? Why not a wheelchair-bound infantryman?

The judiciary’s chieftains suffer no ill consequences when the unintended consequences of their decrees prove to be ruinous. That’s why answers to the thorny questions of public policy belong to the elected branches of government. Military leaders also need a reminder that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is still the law of the land, regardless of the personal desires of the commander in chief.

It’s worth noting that during this year’s DADT debate, such blatant homophobia has been reserved to very reactionary fringes of conservative thought, as mainstream Republicans have attempted to envelop their opposition in terms of military need. And so, this editorial is shocking not just because it’s so offensive, but also because supporters of the policy have generally eschewed these tactics in recognition of the fact that the American public has evolved beyond their implications. Not so The Washington Times, apparently.

As Serwer puts it, “Look, I could point you to the empirical evidence showing DADT discharges slowing after 2001 when the military stopping being able to take recruits for granted. I could point out that countries like Israel allow gay troops to serve openly…But that would all be useless. Because Judge Virginia Phillips already made most of those points in her ruling overturning the policy, and the Times editorial board didn’t address any of them.”

The people who make these kinds of arguments are also implicitly aligning themselves with the troops and have to generally believe that they are serving as a voice to the uniformed men and women who cannot speak out openly against repealing the policy. And I’m sure some small number probably agree with WT’s argument, but I imagine that the majority of American troops — many of whom continue to serve alongside gay servicemembers without any problems — must feel just as repulsed and disgusted by the assumption that they’re all homophobic as we are.

This morning, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton suggested that openly gay servicemembers could undermine the U.S. military, telling ABC’s Christiane Amanpour that the United States has never lost a war to a foreign country that allows open service:

AMANPOUR: Would you support [ending don't ask, don't tell] if the Pentagon review says it’s time to get rid of it?

SHELTON: If the men and women in uniform at the fighting level, particularly the Marines and Army say, ‘no it doesn’t make any difference to us,’ and therefore it won’t break the readiness of our great armed forces…

AMANPOUR: Why do you think it would? I mean some of the great allies of the United States have. Whether it’s Canada, whether it’s Britain, France, Australia, even Israel allows openly gay men and women to serve in the military. And they have great armies, great militaries.

SHELTON: They have great militaries, great armies. But if you check the historical records, Christiane, as you know, we’ve never lost to any of them. We are the top of the pile. We are the best in the world. And we want to stay that way.

Watch it:

Shelton’s argument is confusing because “the historical records” also show that the United States has not engaged in armed conflict with these nations since they’ve allowed open service and their experiences actually reveal that open gay servicemembers don’t undermine military readiness or effectiveness. (H/T: @tcmassie)

This morning, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan argued that the Pentagon’s decision to limit the number of people who can approve discharges under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a result of President Obama’s own realization that the Senate will not be able to pass legislation ending the policy after the midterm elections. Appearing on NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show, Sullivan said that the new discharge rules signaled an end to the policy:

SULLIVAN: I think the president has realized that he’s not going to be able to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the lame duck session. So he’s done something very interesting. He has reserved the decision to fire openly gay servicemembers to just five senior Pentagon officials. They will have to approve every discharge and they will not. So this thing will die on the vine.

Watch it:

Advocates expect the number of discharges to decrease, since the policy will effectively be in the hands of Obama’s appointees. Defense Department officials, however, are publicly stressing that the new discharge rules do not represent any kind of moratorium of the policy. “I wouldn’t interpret that as a higher bar, a lower bar,” a defense official told reporters on Thursday. “That is not intended to be a substantive change in the decision-making. You should not interpret that as we are going to separate more people or less people. We are going to elevate these decisions to ensure uniformity and care in the enforcement of the law. It is what it is,” the official said.

Earlier this week, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett still insisted that the administration was committed to repealing the ban in the lame duck session. “We do fully intend to push forward…we are determined to get it done,” she said.

Last night, during an appearance on The News Hour, TIME corespondent Mark Thompson reported that the results of the Pentagon’s Working Group studying Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will show mixed support for ending the policy and reiterated the military’s interest in slow-walking the repeal process:

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what is the status of the broader review? They sent out these surveys to service members, nearly half a million, then their families. That was in the early midsummer. Are those in yet?

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I mean, it’s being collected by an outside firm. It soon will make its way throughout the Pentagon.

The sense I’m getting, talking to insiders, is this basically breaks down into thirds. A third of the body politic doesn’t care. A third opposes it, and a third is an advocate for lifting the ban…But the Marine commandant this weekend, John Conway, said 95 percent of the — James Conway said 95 percent of the Marines he has taken surveys of do not want to serve with openly gay men and women. That is a stunning figure, if that is what’s going to be in the poll. [...]

MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, will they say, we can do it, or is there some pushback now from the service chiefs?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, no, their — Well, the sense is, No. 1, their mission is not — their mission is only how we should do it if the law changes, not should it be changed.

So, they’re going to look for the best path to undo don’t ask, don’t tell. There is some sense that the service chiefs, especially the Marines and the Army, the ground force guys, are slow-rolling this thing. They don’t want it to move out fast. They want it to take a long time.

I mean, it’s interesting. The papers filed with the courts have said, we have to train everybody before we do this. Meanwhile, you talk to the generals in Afghanistan who are saying, my lord, we have more important things to worry about. This is the last thing on our minds. So, there is some sort of disconnect there.

Meanwhile, in another sign that the government intends to defend the constitutionality of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals next year and drag out the repeal process even further (should the Senate fail to approve a bill in the lame duck session), Politico’s Josh Gerstein notes that DOD may be trying to bolster its argument by stressing that the new discharge rules do not represent any kind of moratorium of the policy. “I wouldn’t interpret that as a higher bar, a lower bar,” a defense official told reporters at yesterday’s briefing. “That is not intended to be a substantive change in the decision-making. You should not interpret that as we are going to separate more people or less people. We are going to elevate these decisions to ensure uniformity and care in the enforcement of the law. It is what it is,” the official said.

All of this, of course, is only contributing to a sense of uncertainty both inside and outside the ranks and ultimately undermines the possibility of a smooth end to the policy. As the RAND Corporation has concluded, implementing gay service that stated that openly gay service was entirely workable, but that a successful new policy must be “decided upon and implemented as quickly as possible” to avoid anxiety and uncertainty in the field. The military must “to convey a new policy that ends discrimination as simply as possible and to impose the minimum of changes on personnel,” the group found. Larry Korb also notes that, British, Canadian, Australian, and Israeli forces all dropped the ban quickly once ordered to do so by the courts without any adverse consequences. In fact, the British dropped the ban within one month after announcing that they would comply with a European Court of Human Rights decision that said that the ban on gays violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

During tonight’s North Carolina senate debate, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said he was against changing the 14th amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship, but said “it is important for the courts to determine” if the “founders” intended to allow for the practice:

BURR ON THE 14th: But I think when you have a debate in the country and that issue is raised, then it’s important for us to have that arbitrator, the courts to come in and tell us did our founders, when they wrote the 14th, did they have something else envisioned?

But the opposite should happen to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Burr insisted. That policy should be taken out of the courts and left to Congress. He didn’t know if being gay was a choice but worried that repealing the policy would require the military to change “the accommodations for troops”:

BURR ON DADT: Now personally I don’t see a reason to reverse it. But that’s a personal opinion. I think the country should have a debate. And what we should do is we should wait until the Department of Defense has gotten back the survey of those individuals who serve…. But I’m confident of this—that this is the wrong time to change this policy. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops deployed. We don’t yet know what we might have to do, from a standpoint of changing the accommodations for troops if the policy changed.

Watch a compilation:

As Pam Spaulding points out, Burr’s concern about “soap dropping in the shower,” so to speak, is unfounded. American soldiers are already showering alongside gay troops and so are the foreign troops who serve alongside openly gay servicemembers. None of our 25 allies that allow open service segregate troops on the basis of sexual orientation. As Larry Korb argues in this report, “the militaries of Great Britain, Canada, and Israel amply demonstrate that lifting the ban on openly gay service will not require the U.S. military to provide separate housing, shower, or other common-use facilities for gay and lesbian service members.” In fact, even General Carl Mundy, commandant of the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995 and an opponent of a repeal, has predicted that segregating the forces “would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. … It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”

On the topic of health care, Burr said that he supported provisions that ban insurance companies from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions and close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole, but insisted that the Affordable Care Act must still be repealed.

“Actually, Judy, those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed. And the truth is it doesn’t close the doughnut hole.”