The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Six

Yesterday's breakthrough announcement about a compromise on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal legislation — reached by the White House, the Pentagon, Congressional leaders, and the two LGBT organizations at the heart of LGBT military issues (Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and Servicemembers United) — has created a swarm of relief that repeal for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is imminent. But like your favorite soap opera or Lost episode (RIP, dear show), there are enough twists and turns in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" debate to get everyone reaching for the Advil.

Here's where things stand right now, best as we can tell. But first, a quick call to action: none of this all matters unless the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and in particular six wavering Senators, get on the ball with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Send these six Senators an email now (and then call them if you can) to let them know that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should be relegated to dinosaur status.

Yesterday's game-changing moment came as several LGBT groups, White House officials, Congressional offices, and Pentagon leaders met together to hammer out what's being touted as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise. The backstory of all of this, which we explained yesterday, was that all four of these groups were at loggerheads about how to implement a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." That's seemingly not the case any longer.

What could happen is this: repeal language could be slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a piece of legislation that both houses of Congress must vote on, and something that they're likely to vote on this week. The repeal process would look something like this: if Congress has the votes necessary to include the repeal language in the National Defense Authorization Act, the Act will pass with a call for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to be officially undone, stricken from U.S. law.

If only it were that simple, of course. Before the repeal could take effect, a number of things would have to happen first.

• One, the Department of Defense would have to receive the results of a Pentagon study that's currently underway (and scheduled to conclude in December 2010). Those study results would have to affirm the fact that integrating the U.S. military with gay, lesbian and bisexual troops would not hurt troop morale, recruitment, and unit cohesion. (We already know most of those answers of course, so the hope is that this wouldn't be a stumbling block.)
• Once that study drops, President Obama, Admiral Mike Mullen (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would have to sign off on a repeal. They're all on record favoring a repeal, but they're also known as a pretty cautious bunch, and will likely wait to sign off until every single "i" and every single "t" is dotted and crossed. Who knows how long that could take.

Only then will "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" be booted from U.S. law and relegated to the history books.

This compromise isn't ideal by any means, and is going to require a giant leap of faith from LGBT groups who are already skeptical of the Obama administration's commitment to LGBT rights issues. But as John Aravosis at AMERICAblog said last night, without this compromise, "I think 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal is dead — dead this year, dead next year, and probably dead for years to come because we're going to lose a serious number of seats in the Congress in the fall election (and possibly even lose the House). This option, at least, preserves a chance at repeal next year. Without it, there is no chance."

I might take exception to the idea that Democrats are going to lose a crap-ton of seats this Fall (I just don't think it's going to be an avalanche). But I will agree that we're likely to lose some seats this Fall, meaning that if this compromise repeal procedure doesn't move forward now, it's likely not going to move forward for years. And the end result of that would be more highly qualified troops kicked out of the U.S. military, solely because of their sexual orientation.

Is the compromise perfect? No, it's not. But is it the only way to get a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" moving forward this year? Yeah, I think so.

And therein lies the last piece of drama. Just to get this compromise process to begin, we need to make sure the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee allows repeal language to be attached to the National Defense Authorization Act. That is NOT a done deal. Sen. Carl Levin, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said earlier this week that he's not sure if there are enough votes in his committee to move a repeal forward.

Indeed, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has been stressing the fact that there are six key U.S. Senators on this committee that have not yet committed to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."  The hope is that now that the Pentagon, the White House, LGBT groups and Congressional leaders have reached a compromise, these wishy-washy Senators will move over to the repeal fold. But there's no guarantee whatsoever.

That's why it's critically important to start pounding the pavement — or rather, dropping some emails and making some phone calls — to these six U.S. Senators. Who are they? They are five Democrats and one Republican: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida), Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia), Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts). Send these members of the U.S. Senate an email now, urging them to sign onto this compromise and push a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" one step closer to reality.

Richard Socarides, an LGBT activist and former advisor to President Bill Clinton, said that while this compromise isn't perfect, it's something we should bite into.

"It may be the best we can get, and if so, I say let's grab it. But it is not repeal with delayed implementation. It's conditional future repeal," said Socarides, spreading a dose of reality. But if it's the only viable step that can lead to a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," would we be fools not to work hard to make this happen?

Photo credit: The U.S. Army