OMG!!! O’Donnell Compared Gay Sex to Adultery (and Other Idiocy Related to Gay Rights)

Christine O’Donnell makes an adult point about gays in the military during the debate last night.  Think progress plays the tired game of “can you believe she compared gay sex to that?”

Specifically when asked about DADT, she said (assuming Thinkprogress is not actually lying—which is not always a safe assumption with them):

The military already regulates personal behavior in that it doesn’t allow affairs to go on within your chain of command. It does not allow it you are married to have an adulterous affair within the military. So the military already regulates personal behavior because it feels that it is in the best interest of our military readiness.

So Thinkprogress argues this is “compare[ing] allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military to ‘adultery.’”  First, she was not saying allowing gays to serve openly is like the act of adultery.  Second, she was not comparing gay sex to adultery, either.  She was pointing out that the military does in fact regulate private consensual sexual behavior that the law ordinarily would not prohibit, and few would even credibly question that practice.  You can literally go to jail for adultery in the military.  And it makes the point that whatever right to privacy exists in civilian life is significantly reduced in military life.  If you can prohibit adultery in the military without a constitutional problem, it significantly undermines the argument for repealing DADT.

This is a logical and cogent argument.  And Think Progress wants to pretend that it is somehow out of bounds.  Don’t play this game, conservatives.  By the time you are done, you won’t be allowed to make any argument for your side on any subject.

Also for bonus points they denounced her belief that being gay is an “identity disorder” four years ago, explaining that it is a “position that has been universally rejected by science and psychology since the early 1970s.”

Oh, there is a consensus!  Where have we heard that before?

Of Rabbis and Gay Soldiers...

I touched on this in my last post discussing the opinion striking down Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), but one case that is particularly on point is Goldman v. Weinberger.  In that case, Goldman, an orthodox Rabbi ran afoul of regulations that would prohibit him from wearing a yarmulke.  As you may know, many Jews consider it a command from God to always keep one on, and so he was literally being asked to choose between obeying God or Uncle Sam.  We should be loathe as a society to force that kind of choice on anyone, as a matter of policy rather than law.  He sued to prevent enforcement of those regulations and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where he lost.

I have already highlighted Stevens’ extremely deferential approach, but many on the left are claiming that in fact the judge was deferential in the DADT case as well.  Now there is no doubt she said she was, but that assertion does not withstand scrutiny.  It was lip service.  How do I know this?  Because all of the arguments she arrayed against DADT applied equally to the rule in Goldman.  Now you can read through it all and hear in excruciating detail how awful she thinks this is as a matter of police, but fortunately starting on page 74 she summarizes her points.  So let’s look at each and see how well they apply to Rabbi Goldman’s plight all those years ago.  She states that the Petitioners (the Log Cabin Republicans et. al.) have shown the following bulleted points to be true:

• by impeding the efforts to recruit and retain an all-volunteer military force, the Act contributes to critical troop shortages and thus harms rather than furthers the Government's interest in military readiness;

 Which applies applies to both orthodox jews and gay soldiers.  Check.

“Permission to Speak Freely” or “Full Metal Idiocy on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

So yesterday a Federal Judge, Virginia Phillips, struck down the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) statute for military service.  Do I have to tell you this was in California?  Yeah it’s the fucking Ninth Circuit, again.  The decision is so awful it is frankly hard to know where to begin.  But let’s start with the political issue, first.  This decision can and should be laid right at the feet of Barrack Obama if this passage in the opinion is correct: “Finally, it again must be noted that Defendants called no witnesses, put on no affirmative case, and only entered into evidence the legislative history of the Act.”

You get that?  What it implies is that the Obama administration’s lawyers took a dive.  Now I am a little cautious about believing the judge on this point, after the shenanigans Judge Walker pulled in the Proposition 8 case.  I am once bitten, twice shy, now.  But if the judge is telling the truth, once again we are seeing government officials who are charged with a duty to defend the constitutionality of any law, even laws they disagree with, making only a cursory effort to comply with that duty.

Indeed, it quotes statements of opinion by the President and Admiral Mike Mullen and treats it like an “admission” of the defendants, which strikes me as dubious.

But let’s get to the meat of the issue.