Thanks to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for inviting ThinkProgress to report live from its Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Day Celebration.

Col. Grethe Cammermeyer has been fighting discrimination in the military for over 20 years, but her effort didn’t come to an end until yesterday when gays and lesbians were permitted — for the first time in American history — to serve openly.

Cammermeyer had come out as a lesbian 1989, when the Defense Department viewed homosexuality as incompatible with military service, and was separated from the National Guard shortly thereafter. She challenged her discharge and won reinstatement in 1994, after a federal court found the nation’s ban on gay military service unconstitutional. From 1994 until 1997, Cammermeyer served under the new DADT policy, inspiring the television movie Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close. 

Cammermeyer continued to advocate for the repeal of DADT and was recently appointed to the Defense Advisory Council of Women in the Services. ThinkProgress caught up with the trail-blazing colonel at last night’s celebration, and she told us that even though her retirement feels like it was “a generation ago,” her fight for equality wasn’t achieved until this week:

FORD: What does it feel like to arrive at this day, so far after your own vindication?

CAMMERMEYER: Well, you know, the vindication didn’t occur until today, because the reason I started my challenge in 1989 was to get the policy overturned. And in its place, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was created, and there was no vindication just because I won and was reinstated. It was, you know, the thousands who have lost their careers since. And now, it’s like the time is finally here that they can serve with honor and dignity and — still a little trepidation of how is everything is going to go, but it all works out in the end. It’s probably the best day that I can think of for the American military as well as for American in general.

What I said some months ago when it was first overturned… Until the repeal, we in the service represented the flag. Now, the flag represents us.

Watch our full interview with Col. Cammermeyer:

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan — who led the charge against same-sex marriage in the state — has written a letter to President Obama urging him to stop “attacking” the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act — which prohibits the federal government from recognizing gay and lesbian couples. In the letter, Dolan argues that Obama’s decision not to defend the 1996 law undermines his commitment to parenting and children:

Mr. President, your Administration‟s actions against DOMA and the values it stands for contrast sharply with your excellent Mother‟s Day and Father‟s Day proclamations issued earlier this year, which are also referenced in the attached analysis. In these perceptive and heartening statements, you correctly emphasize the critical role played by both a mom and a dad in a child‟s life, and you rightly call upon society to do all it can to uphold both mothers and fathers.

I know that you treasure the importance that you and the First Lady, separately and as a couple, share in the lives of your children. The Mother‟s Day and Father‟s Day proclamations display a welcome conviction on your part that neither a mom nor a dad is expendable. I believe therefore that you would agree that every child has the right to be loved by both a mother and a father.

Dolan’s argument appears unfounded, however. A range of existing studies, including research on gay and lesbian parents, have found that while it’s ideal for a child to be raised by two parents, the parents’ gender doesn’t cause radical differences. The American Psychological Association has also concluded that “beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents have no empirical foundation. Lesbian and heterosexual women have not been found to differ markedly in their approaches to child rearing.”

Read the full letter here.

Thanks to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for inviting ThinkProgress to report live from its Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Day Celebration.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) joined in last night’s celebration of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, calling it a “monumental day in our country’s history” and a matter of “fundamental fairness.” He expressed his eagerness to get back to work fighting for LGBT equality and encouraged the LGBT community to keep standing up and advocating, because “the American people get it.”

Udall also commented on the anti-gay rhetoric prevalent in the Republican presidential primary, suggesting it has a negative effect on youth. But, he said, “it’s going to get better” and they will be “proven wrong”:

UDALL: It can’t but have an effect, but look, it’s going to get better. We’ve got campaigns across the board making the case that every American deserves to have the promise of the Declaration of Independence made real. We’re created equal. We have an equal opportunity — equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Republican party candidates are going to be proven wrong, I think not only in the long run, but also in the short run, because these are backwards policies. These are policies that don’t fit in the 21st Century. It’s disturbing, but again, the voters are going to weigh in and they’re going to weigh in for a progressive 21st Century approach to sexual orientation. [...]

If Americans of all backgrounds, all regions speak up and draw attention to those discriminatory thoughts and policies, they’re going to fall through their own weight. They’re not going to last. They never do.

Watch it:

North Carolina House Majority Leader Paul Stam (R) and Minority Whip Rick Glazier (D) debated the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage in North Carolina at the UNC law school this afternoon. Towards the end of the event, Stam — who supports the measure — suggested that allowing gay and lesbian people to marry would open the door to polygamy and challenged Glazier to respond to his “slippery slope” argument. “Different things can be treated differently if the things or people are in a very different relationship,” Stam said.

Glazier pushed back hard, arguing that gay people are not “things” and they “ought to be treated the same” as anyone else. He countered that the government has “no compelling governmental interest” to deny marriage to a gay couple while allowing two straight people to wed. He then outlined with his own “slippery slope” argument against starting on the path of denying rights to minority groups:

GLAZIER: We engage here in an incredible slippery slope. So if gay folks aren’t allowed — don’t have the fundamental right to do the one thing that as human beings we all want to do, which is to decide who we want to live with, who we want to marry, who we want to have a relationship with. Then explain to me, maybe you should tell the folks, does that mean that they also don’t have the right to public office? That’s a lesser constitutional right to run for public office than it is to decide who you’re going to spend your day with.

Watch it:

Thanks to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for inviting ThinkProgress to report live from its Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Day Celebration.

At last night’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal celebration, White House Director of the Office of Personnel Management John Berry delivered official remarks on behalf of President Obama. After concluding the president’s statement, Berry added his own congratulations to the activists who helped achieve the policy’s demise:

BERRY: But also to each of you. Change doesn’t happen without energy, and each of you provided that energy. This victory — this victory would not have happened without Aubrey Service and the SLDN leadership. Aubrey, thank you, and thanks to all the groups and the organizations who fought for justice and liberty for all.

He concluded with a personal anecdote:

My dad was in the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal. And before he passed away at 86, he was talking to me one night about this issue, and he said, “You know, I don’t know what all this fuss about gays in the military is all about.” He says, “You know, back then, we didn’t call them ‘gays,’ but they were there and they served and died as bravely as anybody else.”

For those of you who are serving, thank you. For those of you who have served, thank you. For those of you who will serve, God bless you. God bless each of you for your service. God bless all who serve our country. God bless our President, and God bless the United States of America.

Watch the full remarks:

ThinkProgress filed this report from Los Angeles, California.

At the California Republican Party convention last weekend, ThinkProgress spoke to Tim LeFever, chairman of the board of Capitol Resource Institute, a group collecting signatures to repeal the landmark gay education bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) earlier this year. The law ensures contributions of gays and gay rights are included in school textbooks, and adds sexual orientation to the state’s existing anti-discrimination protections that prohibit bias in school activities, instruction, and instructional materials.

LeFever, a two-time Republican nominee for Congress in the Sacramento area, told ThinkProgress about the coalition he’s been building to repeal the law. In addition to the Family Research Council, a powerful anti-gay hate group based in DC, and several conservative Christian organizations in California, LeFever said he has received support from the Tea Party. The Tea Party, LeFever explained, is supporting a repeal of gay history out of spite. The Tea Party believes “we haven’t found time to teach the Constitution, but we’re finding time like this,” LeFever said:

LEFEVER: Yeah the Tea Party. We have a number of Tea Party members that are fighting for this and they’re fighting for it not so much on the moral grounds because the Tea Party has made a point of staying away from the traditional moral issues. This does overlap over the many things they do in term of the financial side of it: the idea that we would have to reprint textbooks. And the constitutional aspects of it, that we haven’t found time to teach the constitution in this country but we’re finding time like this. That seems to be the approach for many in the Tea Party.

Watch it:

Of course, federal law already provides a requirement for teaching of the U.S. Constitution. According to LeFever, the Tea Party believes the teaching of gay history somehow undermines that instruction.

ThinkProgress also spoke to Robert Newman, the head of California Christian Coalition. He expressed concerns about the protections against bullying provided by the gay education law and claimed that bullying is not an important issue, and is part of the “maturation process.”

Yesterday marked the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t — an 18-year-old policy that prohibited gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military and forced more than 14,000 qualified men and women out of the armed forces and many thousands more to serve silently in fear of being discovered. Responding to strong pressure from LGBT advocates and congressional Democrats, the Senate passed and President Obama signed legislation repealing the law in December 2010 and officially certified the end of the policy on July 22.

But you may have missed the historic occasion if you were watching Fox News. Given its habit of ignoring news that does not appeal to the conservative base, the network largely ignored the story, mentioning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” just 16 times yesterday between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m., according to a ThinkProgress search of Critical Mention. Comparatively, CNN and MSNBC covered the repeal 66 times and 84 times respectively:

Fox offered slim coverage of the certification of repeal in July, underreported the passage of New York’s historic same-sex marriage law, and remained mostly silent after a major law firm reversed its decision to defend an explicitly anti-gay law in March. Last year, the network failed to report that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bashing 2004 re-election campaign — had come out as gay.