Elaine Donnelly, whose “job” I assumed would have disappeared by now — all she ever really did was fight against gays serving in the military, and that bird has flown — is very upset with Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for failing to pledge to re-weaken the United States military by reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), coordinated the survey. She says she is disappointed that Romney recently told the Des Moines Register he does not plan to change the law mandating homosexual military service.

“Governor Romney told the Des Moines Register that, well, yes — Congress shouldn’t have rushed the repeal bill through, but it’s happened now, and the wars are winding down, so now it’s okay,” Donnelly notes. “That was disappointing because it’s just like with ObamaCare — Congress made a huge mistake in passing that law.”

And the CMR president does not understand why the issue of “gays” in the military has not created the same outrage that followed ObamaCare.

“All of the Republicans are saying it is time to repeal ObamaCare. Why then would we say that the mistake made by the lame-duck Congress with regard to our military should be allowed to stand indefinitely?” she wonders.

Time for an episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions, Elaine: the reason the issue of gays serving openly in the military has not created any outrage is that a super-majority of Americans supported repealing the bigoted law. I do understand that wingnuts have to tell themselves thousands of lies per day in order to keep their heads from exploding, but in all the months leading up to repeal, every poll showed that Americans thought the ban on open service was stupid and bigoted. Ergo, repeal did not lead to “outrage.” Or, simpler: Elaine, nobody cares what people like you think about these sorts of issues anymore, save for the shrinking segment of the population that lives in your hateful, misinformed little echo chamber.

Sorry.

Brown University’s president has proposed that it continue to ban military recruiters from campus until the military welcomes trans recruits. It risks losing vast amounts of federal money by doing so, thanks to the Solomon Amendment. Vermont Law School has blazed this trail, forgoing millions in favor of upholding its own ethics code. But as one commenter has pointed out on this blog, even VLS has not stood up for trans rights. Go, Brown!

[Note from Evan:  This is Jenny Blair, and she's going to be pitching in a bit with the writing around here.  Welcome her!]

One of only two law schools in the nation to have denied military recruiters access to its campus during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era recently announced it will lift its ban once DADT is repealed in September.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of American law schools, the Vermont Law School has kept recruiters off its campus because the military’s barring of openly non-heterosexual people violated a non-discrimination policy that the school adopted in 1985. That lack of hypocrisy cost VLS dearly–to the tune of some $500,000 a year in federal funds since 2000–when the Defense Department decided to withhold federal funding from all universities of which any part prohibited military recruiters. [The Defense Department can do that because of the Solomon Amendment, which prevents schools from receiving federal funding if they don't allow military recruiters on campus.]

In other words, the students, faculty, and trustees of Vermont Law School said no thanks to over $5 million in order to uphold the school’s own stated principles. Who says lawyers’ loyalties are for sale? Bravo, VLS.

More good news.  Though Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has technically been repealed, as we all know, there has been an injunction in place essentially preserving the ban while the military prepares for the policy change.  The Ninth Circuit has put a stop to that, and the Pentagon says they’ll comply with the court order:

Even with Obama’s support for ending the 18-year-old policy, Obama’s justice department asked the appeals court to keep the injunction in place to give the military more time to prepare for admitting gay soldiers.

On Wednesday, a three judge-panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the process of repealing DADT is now “well under way”.

The government “can no longer satisfy the demanding standard” to keep the injunction on hold, the court ruled.

The Pentagon said it was still studying the ruling, but added it would comply with the court order.

Dave Lapan, a military spokesperson, said the US military was immediately taking “steps to inform the field of this order.

Step by step, the discriminatory institutions are falling away.  It’s always nice when the courts give the administration a little nudge, though.

UPDATE:  Predictably, the self-loathing gay wingnut part of the internet has found a reason to hate this victory, as there is no victory for LGBT rights that they are ever truly happy about.

It makes me happy when Elaine Donnelly opens her mouth. Out of all the Religious Bigot Activists, she is one of the most consistently stupid, most consistently wrong ones of all! Indeed, her record of being right about anything rivals Bill Kristol’s, but she’ll never make as much money for being wrong as he does, because she chose the wrong subject to be a hack about. [He chose:  everything; She chose: gays] ANYWAY, what is coming out of Elaine’s wordhole right now?

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), believes “this statement [regarding the repeal] [of DADT, by Obama] suggests that the president’s political promises to LGBT left activists, the ones who promote lesbian, gay, bisexual [and] transgender causes, are more important than his responsibilities as commander in chief.”

She suggests the president wants to deliver certification of the repeal during “LGBT Pride Month” in June — something he proclaimed last June and the year before that, deviating only slightly from Bill Clinton’s proclamation of “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month” in June 2000.

“This would be highly irresponsible,” Donnelly contends. “There will be a political price to be paid, whether the president realizes that or not. His base will vote for him anyway, but other voters who support the military are likely to consider that action on his part to be an affront to the military, certainly unfair to the troops.”

Ha ha, aren’t you glad you are not Elaine Donnelly?  I mean, if the best artistic representation of my brain involved a GIF of a ping-pong ball slamming against the inside walls of a skull, I would be dejected and bitter!

ANYWAY, so Elaine, in the above quote, was speaking to her hate group of choice, the “news” arm of the Amurkin Famly Sociashun, and she is not happy about the things Barack Obama said about the military!  Apparently, buried deep within the document, he said that he is against any backwoods, buck-toothed morons [my words] who want to repeal his repeal of DADT!  CAN YOU IMAGINE?!

But the problem, for people like Elaine, is that she is soooooo tied up in her bigoted, uneducated, preconceived notions about homosexuality that she cannot understand the following facts, due to aforementioned ping-pong brain problems:

1.  Openly gay service strengthens the military, because it allows qualified people to stay and encourages other qualified people to join.  I mean, especially with Arabic translators, since they were disproportionately affected by DADT.  And who are you terrified of, Elaine, besides gays?  Yes, that is right, you are terrified of brown people with funny names.  Silly idiot.  But lots of them speak Arabic, so it behooves [look it up, Elaine] us to have lots of qualified people who are able to speak with them, in their language!  [Yes, there are other languages, Elaine.  Crazy, I know!]

2.  The GREAT majority [to the tune of like 75%!] of the country supported DADT repeal!  The only political price to pay would be to lose the votes of the 25%, consisting entirely of mindless dingbats, who were against it!  They also are the mindless dingbats who still aren’t sure, even after seeing every document imaginable, that the president was born in the United States, because on top of being mindless dingbats, they are also pigheaded racists who can’t handle the specter of a black man who is smarter and better than they are.  And he is.  Smarter.  Better.  They weren’t voting for him in 2012 anyway, so it’s not really a “loss,” per se.

3.  Hey Elaine, do you remember that time you embarrassed yourself testifying in Congress, when Patrick Murphy tore you apart, and we all laughed and giggled, for obvious reasons, but also because you showed up wearing a pink triangle?!  Good lord, woman, get a job!  Oh what, you have no discernible skills?

Oh well.  Some people get “Left Behind” in this society, I guess.  Elaine Donnelly got Left Behind.  By reality.  Should we feel sorry for her, or just move on?  I pick “move on.”

[Warning:  This piece is completely freaking long.  I have tried to make it enjoyable.  If you don't like that, read something different.]

I have been arguing with myself over whether to post on this screed by someone called “Jim O’Neill,” because to do so could be very time consuming.  First of all it is so long-winded that to address its points could take the entire day.  Even simply mocking the piece, paragraph by paragraph, could take an hour.  What we have here is a guy who seems to have gone quite far off his rocker, who believes that obscure, fringe sources and unhinged hatemongers like NARTH and Scott Lively, who are rejected by the entire scientific and mental health communities, are somehow the only ones telling him the truth, and who truly thinks he has found a  nugget of an idea in stating that the “homosexual agenda” is actually the same as the “Islamist agenda,” because both [he says] are misogynistic!  Uh, yeah.  All you lesbians?  You hate women.  So much.  And all you gay men who shout “divaaaaaa!” at the ceiling any time a woman does something “fierce,” are also he-man woman haters.  Also, apparently liberals don’t care about female genital mutilation in the Islamic world.  Actually, I learned all about that issue from liberal sources.  Anyway, but first, before we enter the biggest vortex of stupid I’ve ever encountered [and this is in a world that contains Peter LaBarbera], let’s look at his bio, because it’s funny:

Born in June of 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim O’Neill (constitutionalwrites.com) proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two. A member of MENSA, he worked as a commercial diver in the waters off Scotland, India, and the United States. In 1998 while attending the University of South Florida as a journalism student, O’Neill won “First Place” in the “Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii AEJMC Research in Journalism Ethics Award.” The annual contest was set up by Carol Burnett with the money she won from successfully suing the National Enquirer for libel.

He is in MENSA, you guys! You know, I have had the opportunity to join MENSA, and have never done so, mostly because I don’t care, but even if I did, you would NEVER see my “MENSA membership” in my bio. I mean, my goodness. But also, he was a Navy SEAL! Now, as we all know, Navy SEALs are trained to be bad-ass and do things like shoot Osama bin Laden in the face, but this does not tell us anything about their perceptive capabilities when it comes to subjects like homosexuality, now does it? Indeed, there are gay Navy SEALs!  This would freak Jim O’Neill out, a lot, as you will see.

Also, your fancy pants college journalism award is named after a campy gay icon, so there is that.

Anyway, let’s jump into the vortex of stupid, but we’ll try not to stay too long.  The supposed thesis of this word salad is that gays should not be able to serve in the military:

(Read More)

[As long as marriage equality is legal in that state.]

So look here, according to Max Read at Gawker, “the Navy is getting a special reward for shooting Osama Bin Laden: Gay marriage!” What a fine reward that is!  For serious, though:

The Navy will allow its chaplains to officiate same-sex marriages once the military’s ban on gay marriage is officially lifted this summer, according to a new memo written by Navy’s head chaplain, Rear Admiral Mark Tidd.

Ha ha, remember how much screaming wingnuts did during the repeal fight, along the lines of “What about the chaplains?!?!” Watch this:

The memo reads: “Regarding the use of base facilities for same-sex marriages, legal counsel has concluded that generally speaking, base facility use is sexuality orientation neutral. If the base is located in a state where same-sex is legal, then base facilities may normally be used to celebrate the marriage.”

Navy marriages on Navy bases typically involve Navy Chaplains, but the memo goes on to say the chaplains involvement is not mandatory and he or she could decline to participate if gay marriage is not “consistent with the tenets of his or her religious organization.”

See? If you’re a poopypants bigot chaplain and you don’t feel up to supporting all the people under your supposed care, you can stay in your quarters that day and cry or whatever, while everybody else is having a good time at a gay wedding.  Everybody wins!

Often lost in the ado over DADT repeal were the stories of the actual gay and lesbian soldiers who have fought and died for this country, so when a friend sent me this article, I wanted to share the story of Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt with you all:

[Jeff Wilfahrt's] 31-year-old son was killed while on foot patrol outside Kandahar on February 27, around the same day the Sheen media blitz kicked into high gear.

[...]

Andrew Wilfahrt was a Renaissance man with an infectious laugh. In his obituary, his parents described him as “compassionate, smart and witty. He was an admirer, composer and player of music who believed deeply in art and humanity. Andrew was fascinated by math, palindromes, maps, patterns, mashed potatoes and the absurd.”

He was also anti-war – part of a “strong family of lefties” from Minnesota, his father said. Andrew stunned everyone when he announced two years ago he was joining the Army.

“He didn’t have a child and a wife,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “In a way, he went over so that somebody with a young family wouldn’t die.”

The grieving father added, “He was a gay soldier.”

[...]

“Andrew told me one of the reasons he wanted to enlist was that he felt guilty as a civilian when so many men with wives and children were separated from their families,” one of his comrades posted on Facebook. “He joined the fight so that guys like me didn’t have to. He is my hero, my friend, and I miss him. Sleep well, buddy. You earned it.”

Andrew’s younger sister, Martha, said the “least interesting thing” about her brother was his sexuality.

“Quite frankly,” the father said, “nobody gave a s*** he was gay. He was a good soldier.”

The piece later mentions that Wilfahrt rode with an African-American guy and a Hawai’an guy in combat, and that they called themselves “Team Minority.” I love it.

Regardless of how you personally feel about the various wars we’re involved in [let us please not have that discussion right now, because I said so], I think we can all agree that this was the sort of guy we want fighting for us.  It’s phenomenal that people still exist in this country who wouldn’t be able to get past Andrew Wilfahrt’s sexuality to see his heroism.

Condolences and thanks to the Wilfahrt family.

[h/t Norm Kent]

The reactions from fundamentalist Christian leaders in the wake of the repeal of DADT have been comical, to say the least, and the hits just keep on coming. Yesterday, Jeremy posted the new cover from WorldNetDaily’s Whistle Blower magazine, and it’s pretty funny:

Now today, there’s a piece at OneNewsNow which asks, without a hint of humor, “What about the rights of Christians in the military?”, as if they were somehow threatened.

A former Navy chaplain has launched a petition drive aimed at defending military chaplains and Christian troops from persecution by proponents of homosexuality.

In December, Lt. Col. Stacy L. Maxey (USAF), who is stationed in Afghanistan, wrote a letter to the editor of Stars and Stripes arguing that the Department of Defense has now become the “Department of Double Standards,” in telling service members who have a problem with the homosexual lifestyle to “learn to deal with it,” while at the same time allowing homosexuals to “parade their lifestyle choices in front of all.”

Did you miss the part where gay soldiers already have to “learn to deal with” the fact that there are a few retrograde wingnuts who are upset about their “lifestyle choices”? Sounds like equal rights to me. Of course, these little conservative children never seem to understand that gay soldiers “parading their lifestyle choices” amounts to little more than what their straight counterparts have been doing for years, e.g. mentioning the name of the spouse they left back at home, possibly displaying a picture of their spouse [being GAAAAY] just as prominently as the straight soldier who sleeps next to them.

Maxey went on to write that he has a higher commitment to God than to the Department of Defense — and that if officials there are upset with his comments, they can “learn to deal with it.” Groups like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have criticized the Air Force officer for his comments, demanding Maxey be punished for insubordination.

You know, when they start talking about how they have a “higher commitment to [their idea of] God” than anything else, they sound just like Islamic radicals. And yes, that’s straight-up insubordination.

Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain who was discharged from the service in 2007 after praying in Jesus’ name while in uniform…

You knew he would show up in this piece. I feel it’s always important to remind people that Klingenschmitt is lying when he says he was discharged for “praying in Jesus’ name.” This information comes to us via his former boss, who is very much an Evangelical Christian, and who is ashamed of what has become of Klingenschmitt:

“I was the dishonored ex-chaplain’s supervisor for the past 2 years,” Holcomb wrote in his message. “I found him to be totally untruthful, unethical and insubordinate. He was and is contemptuous of all authority. He was not court martialed for praying in Jesus’ name. I sent him out in uniform every week to pray at various ceremonies and functions. He always prayed in uniform and in Jesus’ name. He was never told that he could not pray in Jesus’ name. In fact, the issue of prayer had nothing at all to do with his dismissal from the Navy. He disobeyed the lawful order of a senior officer. I am sure that you understand that Navy Regulations forbid any of us, regardless of rank or position, to appear in uniform in support of any political or partisan event.”

Holcomb goes on to say, “He appeared in direct support of a political event, demonstrating contempt for the order of his Commanding Officer and Naval Regulations that we all swear that we will abide by…. The ex-chaplain is a man without honor and you have accepted his story and in doing so you have had ‘the wool pulled over your eyes.’

Again, that’s from his former boss, who also happens to be an Evangelical Christian. You see, among every subset of people and every religious affiliation, there are people with integrity and people without it. Klingenschmitt’s former boss seems to be a man with integrity, and he is appalled that his former charge has so little. Back to the OneNewsNow piece for a minute:

[Klingenschmitt] has launched an online fax petition campaign aimed at protecting the religious expression of chaplains and other religious troops.

“Now that homosexuals are coming out and being blatant and flaunting their homosexual lifestyle, do the Christian troops have a right to separate shower facilities? Separate sleeping quarters? To not be sexually harassed on the job by somebody who’s hitting on them?” he wonders.

1. No.
2. No.
3. Yes, because sexual harassment is already covered by the UCMJ, and DADT repeal does not change that.

But let’s be honest here: any sane heterosexual human would be far more comfortable in a shower with a mature, responsible, openly gay person than they would with a leering closet case fundamentalist Christian, since we know that those with the most intense homophobia [religious-based or not; they use the religion as a shield] very often are those who are deepest in the closet, ashamed of who they are, what they feel, etc. And for the sake of equality, those soldiers aren’t being shuffled off to different shower facilities either.  Of course, if they pull anything, they too fall under the UCMJ.

“We need protection for Christian troops,” he continues, “and that’s why we’re asking Congressman Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) and Congressman Mike McIntyre (D-North Carolina) to strengthen the laws to at least give Christians the same right to be open about their religious faith as the homosexuals now have to be open about their aberrant lifestyle.”

They already have it. Always have, always will. This is why fundamentalist wingnuts are usually so easy to pick out; because they’re loud and obnoxious.

In addition, Klingenschmitt is convinced the Pentagon wants to purge evangelical, Bible-preaching chaplains from the service by giving them an ultimatum — “reconcile” with homosexual sin, or quit.

Yes, well, paranoia is a dangerous thing, but there’s medicine.

UPDATE:  It just gets funnier.  Joe reports that Klingenschmitt has come up with a new way to charge each of his followers $159 to send faxes to all the members of Congress about how sad they are about DADT repeal.

Almost $200,000,000 between 2004 and 2009, according to the GAO.

Fiscal conservatizms for the win!