DADT is Dead!

In a historic vote a bipartisan majority voted to end a discriminatory policy that has been in place for seventeen years.  By a 65-31 vote, that included eight Republican senators, Congress has delivered a final blow to this policy that was instituted in 1993 by Congress and President Clinton -- in many ways as an interim measure.  In the past 17 years thousands of gay and lesbian service men and women have been forced to live secret lives as they have tried to serve their country.  At the same time about 13,000 service members have been discharged from the military because their sexual identity had become known.  Among that number were numerous language experts, including many of its Arabic speaking personnel. 

Yes, there is a conservative backlash brewing, but this is a policy that was on last legs anyway.  If Congress hadn't overturned it, the Courts were about to do so, and the Courts wouldn't have given the government as much leeway in implementing the change.  So, this is actually in the better interests of an orderly transition.  My hope is that the military will see this vote and suspend all pending cases against gays and lesbians, and also begin the process of preparing the troops -- most of whom I think will be quite able to adjust, even as troops had to adjust in the 1940s to integration of the military.  Besides, President Obama campaigned on this issue, promising to see it overturned.  That promise has been kept.  Later this week, then, he will sign this bill into law as a victory for justice in this land!

Back to the reason why the conservative backlash will ultimately fall flat is that a growing majority of young adults no longer see homosexuality as a deviancy.  Even a conservative Christian analysis of this trend (the Barna sponsored book UnChristian,   makes the point that one of the key reasons why young adults are rejecting the church is that they see it as anti-gay.  Well, if they're rejecting the church for that reason, do you think they'd want to join a military that continued to embrace an archaic viewpoint? 

I think that the other reason why the protests will fall flat is that our military effectiveness won't be impaired.  We'll not see troops dying or being maimed in battle, as John McCain and the Marine Commandant claim, because of this policy (this is just pure fear-mongering).  If that happens it's because the military leadership has failed to properly implement a policy that works just fine in the militaries of most of our allies!

A Busy Senate Season

There can be no Holidays for the US Senate until they finish their business. I know that they want to get home for the Holidays, but there is still a lot of key business to get finished!

They made a good start with the extension of the so-called Bush Tax cuts, which brought about much chagrin among many Democrats, who felt with some justification that the extension of these cuts for the wealthy would broaden the deficit without bringing any real value to the economy. But, there were key benefits for middle class and those on the edge that included not only tax benefits, but also the extension of Unemployment Benefits. The economy is expanding and growing and the recession itself has been over for several months, but the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high. The President met with executives from a number of Blue Chip Companies and again encouraged them to start hiring!

With the tax issue out of the way, at least for now, this week should be a busy one. As members of Congress and their staff pine for vacation, the Senate faces several very important pieces of legislation. If Lame Duck sessions are generally pretty uneventful, you can’t say that for this time around. So, here is a lineup and my response:

1. START Treaty: Treaties require a 2/3 majority to pass and this one faces opposition from certain Republicans – led by John McCain – though one of the biggest proponents of this treaty which would provide not only limits on the nuclear capabilities of Russia and the United States, but it allows for verification of these nuclear capabilities. Currently, without a treaty, we don’t have any way of verifying what the Russians are doing. Why does it matter? Well beyond matters of security, what matters is our leadership in stopping nuclear proliferation. If we want to have unfettered ability to build nukes, then how can we expect other nations to put a limit on themselves. Having nukes in this day and age is a sign of power, whether one intends to use them or not. My sense is that this will pass – GOP demands for more time to discuss the treaty is just stone-walling as they’ve had more than enough time to examine it. The military Brass think it’s important and if they think it’s okay, then shouldn’t we think so as well? 
2. DREAM ACT: Although the winds seem to be blowing against passage, this Senate Bill would make it possible for those young people who came to the country illegally (with their parents) to gain a path to citizenship by either serving in the military or completing not only high school, but also college. The military strongly supports this measure, for it gives an incentive to faithful service in the military – helping recruiting. But, it also gives an incentive for those who came to the country with their parents and who know nothing but this country, a reason to work hard toward a goal that would benefit them, but also this nation. We are a nation of immigrants and a college education is the key to success. I can think of no better way of living out our original national motto – e pluribus unum – than this Act. It may not pass, in large part due to a continued anti-immigrant fervor that is present in the country, but this is a just and right act. I call on the Senate to do the right thing!
3. REPEAL OF DADT: The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which was implemented in 1993 as an interim measure, in large part because Congress wouldn’t support Bill Clinton’s call for ending this discriminatory policy. Well the interim period needs to end. DADT, which allows Gays and Lesbians to serve in the military as long as they don’t reveal their secret is unjust and really a threat to US security. The majority of American people support its repeal. The vast majority of service personnel see no problems with ending this policy – only John McCain and some of the higher Military Brass (mostly Marines) want to continue the policy. On a military side, as we have seen from a recent detailed Pentagon Study, there is no evidence that there would be much if any adverse affects on military preparedness if DADT was ended. In fact, there is a growing recognition that DADT rewards dishonesty and potentially undermines security, as gay and lesbian members of the military are susceptible to blackmail. What is more, there is much more support today for the inclusion of gays and lesbians in the military, than there was when Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the military in 1948. Again, this is a matter of justice for all Americans. Equality denied for gays and lesbians is equality denied for all Americans, for it makes of them a separate class who are required to live surreptitiously lest they lose their jobs. And as we’ve seen in the most recent military adventures, some of the most skilled members of the military – especially linguists and translators – have turned out to be gay. Thus, the military has lost important contributors to its efforts. Ending DADT will have an impact not only on the military – and that maybe why there is resistance. Ending DADT in the military puts the lie to other elements of society that have engaged in the same practices. That includes the church. Repeal may open up the conversation in a way will be healthy for all.  The good news here is that there appears to be more than enough votes for a stand alone bill for this to pass!

Each Senate Bill is an important piece of legislation. Each will be historic if passed. Each will require at least some degree of bipartisanship. My hope and prayer is that the Senate will act in a way that is just and right. In my mind that involves passage of each piece of legislation. Then, they go home and celebrate the holidays as they see fit, knowing that they have done the right thing!

The Politics of Stupidity...or More Accurately, The Stupidity of Our Politics

E.J. Dionne posted a great commentary today on Truthdig.

The Politics of Stupidity Strikes Again

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?

Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example.

He recently offered a rather brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country’s deficit that alongside the cuts, he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Imagine: a fiscal conservative who really is a fiscal conservative.

That could never happen here because the fairy tale of supply-side economics insists that taxes are always too high, especially on the rich.

This is why Democrats will be fools if they don’t try to turn the Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year into an election issue. If Democrats go into a headlong retreat on this, they will have no standing to govern.

The simple truth is that the wealthy in the United States—the people who have made almost all the income gains in recent years—are undertaxed compared with everyone else.

Consider two reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One, issued last month, highlighted findings from the Congressional Budget Office showing that “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007,” the period for which figures are available.

The other, from February, used Internal Revenue Service data to show that the effective federal income tax rate for the 400 taxpayers with the very highest incomes declined by nearly half in just over a decade, even as their pre-tax incomes have grown five times larger.

The study found that the top 400 households “paid 16.6 percent of their income in federal individual income taxes in 2007, down from 30 percent in 1995.” We are talking here about truly rich people: Using 2007 dollars, it took an adjusted gross income of at least $35 million to get into the top 400 in 1992, and $139 million in 2007.

Read the Full Commentary from Truthdig.

Welcoming the Stranger -- Reposting

The following essay appeared as a column in the Lompoc Record -- June of 2007.  It speaks of efforts at getting immigration reform.  There appeared hope then that something could be done, but we still remain unable to move forward.  And yet, despite an unwillingness to address the issue, the issue isn't going away.  In fact, the Arizona law that has drawn such oprobrium calls forth from the nation a commitment to move forward quickly on achieving true reform that is just and fair and realistic.   I invite your thoughts.
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Faith in the Public Square
Lompoc Record
June 17, 2007

Immigration reform is again the subject of debate in the nation's barber shops, pubs, grocery aisles, and break rooms. It's being discussed in blogs, opinion pages, chat rooms, and by e-mail. It's one of those issues that simply won't go away, even though no one seems to agree on a solution.

A bipartisan Senate immigration bill was recently pulled off the table because it became bogged down by amendments and because senators were lobbied hard by opponents on the left and the right. Although there's common agreement that something must be done, and that the proposed bill was less than perfect, the question is, can anything get passed in the present environment.

Politics always makes dealing with contentious issues difficult, and with an unpopular president and a fairly evenly split Congress, compromise is difficult, especially with a presidential election cycle heating up. The debate will continue, even if reform waits to be enacted.

The facts in this debate are quite simple: Twelve million people are living in this country illegally, and every day that number increases. Most are here in search of the “American Dream” of a better life and a hopeful future. This is why immigrants have always come here. Of course there are those who come with malicious intent, but they're the minority. As it always has been, immigrant life is difficult - usually families are separated, immigrants live in cramped quarters, and most try to live under the radar lest they be sent home.

Although this is a political issue, it's also a moral one. It is, in fact, a debate over how we treat the stranger living in our midst. As the politicians debate, they hear a multitude of voices, all with different interests - the business community, agricultural interests, schools, health-care providers, labor unions, and law enforcement. The proposed answers to the current dilemma range from the draconian to the lenient, from immediate deportation to providing a path to citizenship. When we listen to the myriad voices that are seeking our attention, we discover that there's really no consensus, no common will. But, doing nothing won't make the problem go away.

There's another voice - it's actually many different voices - that seeks our attention. That voice is the religious community, and like every segment of the population, it is not of one mind.

I can only speak for myself, but what I say reflects the teachings of my tradition. When I read the Hebrew Bible I find a stream of statements talking about how we should treat the alien. Most of these voices call on us to treat the stranger with respect and dignity. Don't oppress the alien in your midst, Jeremiah says on behalf of God, and I will be with you (Jeremiah 7:5-7). The law encourages equal treatment of the stranger, and encourages farmers to leave out gleanings from the harvest for the poor and the alien dwelling in the country (Leviticus 23:22). Why should they do this? The answer given is simple: “Love the stranger because once you were the stranger in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).

What then should I do as an American who is also a person of faith? The answer I seem to hear is this: You were once a stranger, so welcome the stranger who lives in your midst. Baptist theologian David Gushee writes:

“Jesus calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. He then makes clear that our ‘neighbors' include not just family, friends and folk like us, but also strangers and enemies. Every person is my neighbor, whom I am called to love. The ‘undocumented worker' or ‘illegal alien' is my neighbor.”

Now border security is necessary, but that's not the real issue. The real issue relates to those already here - and their families who haven't yet joined them. For now they live in the shadows and are easily used and abused.

If I listen to my faith, I hear a call to invite the stranger into the light of day so that they might live with dignity. They are, after all, my neighbor and are loved by God. If, as the polls suggest, we‘re a nation of the faithful, then surely we must consider carefully this voice and seek a way forward that's humane and compassionate. These are our brothers and our sisters and members of a common human family, created in the image of God.

Dr. Bob Cornwall [was] pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Lompoc (www.lompocdisciples.org). He blogs at http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/.