sundries

[rm]

Last night my father sent me an email about my paper. Despite my specifically stating that I did not want this to devolve into a judgmental conversation about psychology and god, guess what's happening? And he's not even done yet. I have to respond to his letter today, which is, in many ways, incredibly kind, supportive and gracious. But I loathe "I know you asked me not to do X, but I am going to do it anyway." There's only one reason that happens, and it's not a pleasant one.¹

Am totally submitting a proposal for the academic con at Dragon*Con, just have to write in on paper instead of my head. Tried last night, did laundry and took a nap instead.

The oil spill, one month later. ONE MONTH. OIL STILL SPILLING.

Something is happening on DADT today, but what it is, no one is sure. Not only do we not know how the vote is going to go, we're not even sure what the repeal means, as one thing that's being floated is that repeal will merely transfer power to decide this issue back to the Pentagon, and in fact bring us no closer to allowing the gay men and lesbians already fighting and dying for our country to do so openly. Keep an eye on this, as it may be one of those things that gets worse before it gets better. ETA: post with language on this and analysis, in short: "we'll discuss the potential negative impact of homosexuals forever and never fix anything" seems to be a pretty good interpretation of what's up.

Mississippi school denies prom was fake.

The Warren Cup was once banned from American museums because it features explicit sex acts between men. NSFW if classical art is a problem.

Anyone possibly toying with doing scholarship on RPF (or just wants a handy thing to talk about in relation to its existence), should check out this post immediately. via brewsternorth on Twitter.

Last night on Angel and Buffy: Gunn is sort of a dick in terms of getting how to have a relationship and get your damn job done. Also, him and Fred? Paranoid much? Wesley's behaving pretty well; not perfectly, but pretty well. Also, OMG, Hamburger Drive Through Oracle! Paired with the Buffy fast food episode. LOVE. The Earthquake, Fire, Blood has just happened and Angel has made his cryptic remark about a snack and that's all we saw last night.

Meanwhile, annoying Willow plotline continues to be annoying. Seriously, how did we go from "magic is an ethically grey area that can lead to toxic adventures with dark dark things" to "spells don't really do shit other than make you feel good, it's your birthday!"

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¹When I first dyed my hair black when I was 15 and spending the summer taking classes at Yale, my father got very angry, despite the fact that black hair isn't all that different from my natural color. In the ensuing argument, I used the Angry Teen Strategy of Petulant Kids Everywhere, and said "It's my hair!" My father replied "No, it's not." I have lived every moment of my life since then understanding, rightly or wrongly, that he considers me his property.

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Your DADT article's from before last night, when word came out that something billed as a 'compromise' had been worked out, and it was now expected that repeal would pass. If I'm reading it correctly, it's a scare-quotes compromise because while it contains a provision for Defense to complete its review/study before the repeal goes into effect, that would have had to happen anyway -- there was always going to be a phase-in period. So this is looking like a mere face-saver for the opposition, and an all-around Good Thing.

Benen has more on the details here.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I feel like the only person who doesn't like this "compromise", because it's just giving cover to the politicians by saying that the military can put off the change indefinitely if they choose to, when all indications are that they will choose to. Maybe Congressional approval is a step in this process (although I can't follow the logic enough to know if it actually is), but I am NOT going to be a happy camper when President Obama flies the Mission Accomplished banner when the bill is passed. It isn't passed until DADT is dead, and that isn't going to happen before he finds the will to act like the Commander-in-Chief and TELL the generals what to do.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Of course I haven't seen the precise language (and in a sense there's no precise language to see, until a bill actually passes both chambers and any necessary conference), and a great deal will depend on the actual words. But with that caveat, it seems to me that there's a real victory here that goes beyond anything Obama could achieve via executive order.

The reason we even have DADT is because the exclusion of gays and lesbians from military service has been a matter of statute from time immemorial. Ordering the military services not to enforce the ban is like not enforcing sodomy statutes -- it leaves the law in place, and allows for overenthusiastic Texas police to decide to enforce it out of the blue, unless and until you finally get the Supreme Court to tell them they can't. Getting the exclusion out of the law, even if its operation is suspended until a review is complete, actually eliminates the basis for DADT. Which means that once the process is complete, a Republican administration couldn't change things back without getting an actual change in law through Congress.

I mean, yeah, it would be good to have the big symbolic gesture from the White House. But getting the underlying rules of the game changed may matter more down the road.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Language I've seen linked:


"Section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect until such time that all of the requirements and certifications required by subsection (b) are met. If these requirements and certifications are not met, section 654 of title 10, United States Code, shall remain in effect."



That is not repeal of the ban on gay and lesbian Americans serving in the military. Everything remains exactly the same.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by subsection (f) shall take effect only on the date on which the last of the following occurs:

ARM10802 S.L.C.
(1) The Secretary of Defense has received the report required by the memorandum of the Secretary referred to in subsection (a).
(2) The President transmits to the congressional defense committees a written certification, signed by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating each of the following:
(A) That the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the recommendations contained in the report and the report’s proposed plan of action.
(B) That the Department of Defense has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to exercise the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f).
(C) That the implementation of necessary policies and regulations pursuant to the discretion provided by the amendments made by sub-section (f) is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces."

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

But 10 U.S.C. section 654 is the authorization to ban gays and lesbians from serving in the military, and to discharge anyone who was commissioned/enlisted despite the ban. DADT is merely a closet-enforcing policy thereunder, no?

So this language says that the existing law continues until the conditions are met (which would for the most part be necessary for implementation of the new rules anyway). Once the certification is delivered, Section 654 goes away. Once it's gone, there's no longer a statutory basis for DADT. Unless there's some other statutory provision governing service? I'll freely admit I haven't done the research; I'd assumed that if there were another provision of blackletter law in play here I'd have seen it mentioned before now.

ETA: So I followed your link, and while I don't want to be totally Pollyanna about this, I do think that this kind of emotive OMG We Are Betrayed is not necessarily an accurate reflection of the compromise or the process. Yes, they're slow-walking this. But if any of us want it done at all, slow-walking it through December makes a certain amount of sense. That's when the study Gates was promised is due to be finished, and it's not going to be a good thing to ask congressmen to vote to override his request for that review in a tough election season. (Which would be one reason why the votes for a non-compromise repeal were hard to find, and possibly not there.)

Yes, Congress may change for the worse after November. But a president can fire and replace uncooperative Secretaries of Defense and chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Members of Congress and Senators, not so much. Strategically, unless there's another statute governing this that needs to be repealed, this approach makes perfect sense.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

This DADT repeal? Yus, my face is set to "not impressed" Even if it's repealed it's back in the hand of the Pentagon with no anti-discrimination provision. Assume it's implemented at all

So, in theory it's perfectly possible for this or a furture pentagon to go back before DADT - which doesn't protect GBLTs much

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how you're getting "it's possible for this or a future pentagon to go back before DADT." DADT was put into place by executive order, and could always have been taken away by executive order; this statute is the background against which it was put into place. While it's possible for the Pentagon to foot-drag under this compromise, there's nothing here that allows it to go back before DADT: not without a repeal of the executive order putting it into place, which the Pentagon has no power to do.

And this appears to be a repeal provision. The plain reading allows the statute to continue in force until the stated conditions are satisfied, but it does not call for a continuing certification -- that is, it's not a provision requiring the Executive Branch to re-certify that the conditions are met at periodic intervals, failing which Section 654 comes back into force.

So I'm not seeing where it comes back from once it's gone, short of further Congressional action.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

It hands the implementation of it into the Pentagon's hands AND doesn't include any overt anti-discrimination provisions

So there's nothing STOPPING discrimination against GBLTs AND the Pentagon is free to enact policies according to what it believes is necessary for:

"military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces."

Which are all the excuses used by the anti-gay forces against gays in the military

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. If people were expecting language like, "No person shall be denied the right to serve in the armed forces of the United States by reason of gender identity or sexual orientation," I understand that this is not going to be satisfying. But I wouldn't have expected to see language like that. And as for implementation: it's the armed forces. Who else was ever going to be implementing it?

I mean, I grant that the trigger thing isn't good. Ideally this would be a clean repeal, with no conditions to be satisfied first. But let's say for the sake of discussion that the conditions are satisfied within some reasonable time frame -- say, 18 to 24 months.

I'm beginning to have the impression, though, that people have meant something by the words "repeal DADT" that goes beyond repealing DADT. Because if/when the trigger is satisfied here, unless I'm missing something crucial that I haven't seen explained yet, DADT will in fact have been repealed. No, this doesn't implement specific anti-discrimination provisions, but legally that's a separate argument: repealing DADT doesn't automatically carry any such provisions with it, just as repealing the ban on women in combat wouldn't.

But yeah: if you expected to see antidiscrimination provisions, this compromise doesn't do it.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

This article mentions that there may be problems with getting votes from "moderate" Democrats - it's sick & sad that these days "moderate" means "not quite as much of an evil bigot at the Republicans". I hope this passes and actually ends DADT (I'm especially dubious about the 2nd), but the debate about this bill also highlights how warped US politics has become - the Republicans lost big in 2008, and insane bigots still have vast amounts of power over the lives of all Americans.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

At least according to Patrick Murphy, the votes are there in the House. (Which strikes me as probably right, given that Nancy Pelosi was indicating the votes would be there days ago.) Whether they'll be there in the Senate is the worrying part.

I agree with you about the allegedly-moderate Democrats, God knows. What I'd really like to see (short of forcing them all to live somewhere that isn't DC, and to speak to people who aren't Villagers) is some serious effort at Senate rules reform. If the filibuster rules and the requirement for unanimous consent to do anything at all could be fixed, the D-Hell delegation wouldn't be nearly the country-wrecking power that it is.