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.
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.”
The contempt that wingnuts like Elaine Donnelly of the hilariously named “Center for Military Readiness” have for the people they supposedly represent is mindblowing. Here’s Elaine reacting to news that the procedures required to implement DADT repeal, including sessions on how to treat and respect gay troops, will actually be completed with all units, even those currently on the ground in war zones:
Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, said it is “ridiculous” to train combat Army soldiers and Marines as they are engage in daily combat with tenacious insurgents.
“It’s absurd because the military has more important things to think about in that dangerous part of the world,” she said. “For the administration to say this is more important than even with the troops we’re trying to train in that part of the world, I think it shows flawed priorities at best. It is ridiculous.”
Apparently in Elaine’s mind, combat troops just are too stupid to handle another thing on their plates, especially something so egregiously offensive as “not hating the gay person who might save your life.”
Luckily, the top enlisted commander in Afghanistan, Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill, is a hell of a lot smarter than Elaine Donnelly:
“I have heard about the training that will be forthcoming to the battlefield,” Sgt. Hill told Pentagon reporters via a teleconference from Kabul.
“We will take our directions from the Department of Defense, from the secretary of defense, the chairman, as well as the service chiefs of each service. Our plan is to take their direction, and we’re going to execute that training right here on the battlefield.”
No unit is exempted, he said.
“Our goal is to not allow a unit to return to home station and have the unit responsible for that,” he said. “While we own those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, we’re going to execute that training on the ground. We hope that it will have little impact on their combat and security operations here.”
[...]
Sgt. Hill is an outspoken proponent of ending the ban.
“If there are people who cannot deal with the change, then they’re going to have to do what’s best for their troops and best for the organization and best for the military service and exit the military service, so that we can move forward – if that’s the way that we have to go,” Sgt. Hill said on the television show, “Washington Watch” in December.
And again: if troops in combat can’t handle fighting along gay people [hint: the vast majority of them are fine with it], they probably don’t have what it takes to defend our country.
Of course, Elaine Donnelly probably thinks she knows better than Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill, as well. How pathetic.
Marine Corps Commandant James Amos was originally the most steadfast opponents of DADT repeal, but he seems to have taken a turn for the adult, as I suspected he would:
The Marine Corps commandant who once said openly gay service members would be a dangerous “distraction” and was among the most outspoken opponents of repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy said today he does not expect to lose troops over the change.
“I haven’t had any indication yet at all, not at all,” Gen. James Amos told reporters when asked if he expected the mass exodus of troops that Sen. John McCain and other critics predicted if the ban was lifted.
Amos was visiting troops in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province when President Barack Obama signed the repeal in late December. He said he addressed some 12,000 Marines about the change and “everyone said, ‘Sir, we got it. We’re going to do this thing.’”
[...]
“It would be naive to think that somewhere down the road there’s not going to be issues,” Amos told reporters. “I think there probably will be in probably all the services, but I don’t think it’s going to be of any magnitude that’s going to cause much more than a blip. So I’m very optimistic.”
I’m sure Elaine Donnelly will kindly explain to Amos why she knows more about the Marines than he does, because she’s that much of a blowhard. Otherwise, things will be fine.
Because that is what people like Elaine Donnelly do. They lie:
“The U.S. Senate did not allow itself to be bullied into passing legislation that would be harmful to our military,” said Elaine Donnelly, founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness. “This was not just a procedural vote, this was a substantive vote. It’s time for President Obama and his administration to let this issue go.”
Nope. Elaine’s four fans might trust her, and that’s their problem. But she’s lying to protect them from the fact that, as Jeremy points out,
There were several votes on the 40 “nay” side who said they would’ve voted for repeal under different procedural circumstances. Who openly support repeal SUBSTANTIVELY, but who would not follow the PROCEDURE before them. We only needed three of them (two, if Blanche Lincoln’s vote had counted) to put this conversation to rest FOR GOOD. Unfortunately, partisan obstructionism won out.
All you have to do to be aware of that is, like, watch the news occasionally. Elaine trusts that her fans are low-information voters, which is typical for the wingnut world. The contempt they hold for the people that respect them, who trust them for information, is amazing.
Read it and weep at the loss of your comrades in bigotry, Elaine Donnelly, Tony Perkins, etc.:
A Defense Department study group has found that the United States could lift its ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military with little risk to current war efforts, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
“More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent,” the Post said, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the document, due to be delivered to President Barack Obama on December 1.
“The survey results led the report’s authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them,” the Post reported.
The survey was sent earlier this year to 400,000 active-duty and reserve troops, and a separate questionnaire was sent to about 150,000 military spouses.
One of the best kept secrets in the argument over DADT repeal, one that opponents such as Elaine Donnelly and Tony Perkins refuse to wrap their heads around, is that in many units within our military, there are already gays and lesbians serving openly, without any problems. Granted, they aren’t treated equally on an institutional level, but those who would scaremonger about showering and sleeping arrangements will never tell you that, in much of the military, it just comes down to chain of command. Some gay servicemembers must indeed remain very closeted, but then there are those who are basically out, at least with the people they work with every day, and it’s a non-issue.
So I found it interesting that in the new DADT trial for Major Margaret Witt, a discharged Air Force flight nurse, the lead-off witness stated that outright:
In his years of service at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, retired Master Sgt. James Schaffer testified in federal court on Monday, gay and lesbian members of his Air Force Reserve unit bore no stigma.
So in 2004, he was stunned to learn of an Air Force decision to suspend one member of his unit, Maj. Margaret Witt, for homosexual conduct that violated the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
“I felt it was a dishonorable act on the part of the Air Force,” Schaffer testified Monday as the leadoff witness in a U.S. District Court trial to determine whether Witt, who was eventually forced into retirement, should be reinstated with the 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.
He’s damn right that it was a dishonorable act on the Air Force’s part. Master Sgt. Schaffer is basically saying, “we knew she was a lesbian! No one cares!”
I’ve heard that story many times over the years from friends and family in the military, actually. There are untold numbers of our armed forces for whom DADT repeal will change absolutely nothing except that the gays and lesbians they serve with and trust will finally be treated equally under military policy.
Read it and marvel/vomit over the fact that this man runs free, still able to hurt little boys like the one described here:
What do you do with a little boy who likes cross-dressing and playing with dolls? If you’re George Alan Rekers, you “extinguish” the boy’s feminine behavior with a sometimes violent Pavlovian regimen while your scientific team observes through a one-way mirror.
(…)
In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a “play-observation room” with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child.
According to a 2001 account in Brain, Child Magazine, “On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him… Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.”
Rekers’s research team continued the experiment in the family’s home. Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a “swat” or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family’s home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.
After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as “the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy.”
At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide, according to Gender Shock, a book by journalist Phyllis Burke.
I believe the scientific term for George Alan Rekers is “you sick, sadistic bastard.”
It’s one sort of evil to take your own seething self-hatred out on adults. It’s yet another to rape the innocence and identity out of a child whose only crime is that he doesn’t fit into the gender-binary construct that George Rekers, apparently, has never been able to attain for himself.
But let’s be clear about one thing: the reason organizations like Truth Wins Out exist, why Jeremy spends countless hours chronicling the anti-gay movement at Good As You, why Amanda Marcotte takes the time to analyze and explain patriarchy in words any can understand but few have heard before at Pandagon, why Pam Spaulding and her crew and Joe Jervis and the Box Turtle guys (AND SO ON) — and the reason why I make a point of mocking these people as dismissively as they truly deserve — is that this story, while grotesque, should not be shocking. Yes, it’s appalling, but it is only the natural result, taken to its extreme, of Religious Right teachings on sexuality and on gender. And these stories, in all their varying degrees, are myriad, but they all have one simple common denominator: the overarching, bellyaching desire of heterosexual religious men (and those who wish to God every night that they might one day be heterosexual) to control the lives, the gender expression, the sexuality, of all people they view as lesser. This includes women, children, racial minorities, and certainly LGBT people. Again, this is the natural conclusion of the notion of the junk science of “reparative therapy.” This is what happens when people who have been trained like show ponies to repress everything authentic about themselves in the pursuit of the lifeless, unhappy “ideal” of the fundamentalist worldview are allowed to flourish unhindered by modernity. (I mean, look at Saudi Arabia, for god’s sake. Yeah, it’s the same.) This is what happens when those people’s ideas are accorded an ounce of respect. We all have freedom of speech, at least in the United States, but part of that freedom is the responsibility for those of us who live in verifiable reality to do everything we can to ensure that the sadism of the Religious Right, and its concomitant junk science, are granted all the respect they deserve in the marketplace of ideas. (Hint: That would be “none.”) It’s our responsibility to do everything we can to help as many people understand that when people like George Rekers, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, the entire staff of Focus on the Family (including the chipper young cretins they’ve hired to “reach out to millenials,” a battle they’ve long lost), Matt Barber, Elaine Donnelly, Laurie Higgins, Maggie Gallagher, or any of their buttbuddies in bigotry open their maws and spew forth, their words amount to nothing more than long disproven, hateful, ignorant lies. It’s our responsibility to make sure that those who come across our words are armed with the resources (our side being the only one which actually relies on research and reason, citations, real science, etc.) to know the Religious Right is lying, only and always, and to know precisely how and why they’re lying.
This is a big part of why we do what we do.
Our adversaries hurt people. They drive their own to decades of depression and despair, and they drive their own children to substance abuse, rejection, depression and sometimes even suicide.
At the end of the piece quoted above, it’s stated that, even though George Rekers was caught in flagrante diddle-fingers coming back from Europe with a young male whore, that the brain trust at NARTH still stands by Rekers’ “science.” Of course they do. They will never let something like reality, or trails of blood leading to the bodies and souls of kids hurt by their “science,” get in the way of their obscene, wrongheaded, and wholly self-loathing vendetta against those citizens of the world who dare to survive, to love authentically, to dream, to fly, to fuck, to question authority, to laugh, to breathe, to celebrate, to mourn, to rage against the dying of the light…in short, to live, and to do so without asking the permission of the self-appointed religious police. NARTH and similar groups do not care about people. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they have clear and palpable contempt for people, much as most right-wing organizations have clear, palpable contempt for their readers, knowing as they do that their intended audience is too stupid, too abused, or too brainwashed to know any better. They simply don’t care about the human beings involved.
So yeah. We do this to fight for the kids like Kraig, those many years ago, and those who still are vulnerable to an enemy which sees them not as people but as notches on their Culture War belts.
Can. I. Get. A. Witness?
Okay, I’m done spitting daggers now, so if anybody needs this soapbox…
When the opposition polls veterans, they tend to rush for the nearest nursing home, since they know that they have no prayer of making a case against openly gay troops when they ask the actual men and women who are fighting for our country right now. It shows an alarming lack of disrespect for their sacrifices when Elaine Donnelly and her viper-tongued brethren do this, but she’s not a moral person, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
A new poll, of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, tells a more accurate, a more current story:
As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’ decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”
The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’ ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:
– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’ ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.
– 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Only a quarter (25%) would find it unacceptable.
– 73% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say “they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.” Only a quarter (23%) is uncomfortable, and hardly anyone is very uncomfortable (only 7%).
Much as it might chap Elaine Donnelly’s behind, those numbers aren’t going back their way either. There’s simply too much education out there nowadays, and the great majority of younger people in this nation know that the Religious Right’s anti-gay fearmongering has been simply much ado about nothing.
By the way, the poll sample included more than twice as many self-identified Republicans as it did Democrats.
The contempt that wingnuts like Elaine Donnelly of the hilariously named “Center for Military Readiness” have for the people they supposedly represent is mindblowing. Here’s Elaine 
