House Votes to Repeal 'Don't Ask' as Focus Turns to Senate

Congress took a small step toward allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military Wednesday as the House voted, again, to repeal the 17-year-old ban on military gays.

The action now moves to the Senate, where a similar bill awaits consideration in the frenzied final days of the lame-duck Congress.

The House vote of 250-149 came after heated debate on the arguments that have echoed across the Capitol for months: how risky to combat readiness would it be to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and how fair is it to continue to ban them from military service? Critics threw aside the judgments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the troops are ready for the change.

California Republican Buck McKeon, incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, held that repeal would shatter the morale and cohesiveness of small, all-male combat units. "I don't think it's worth the risk to put them in further jeopardy than they are in now,'' he said. "I implore our members to reject this . . . ''

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged members to repeal the "fundamental unfairness'' of the law banning gays from openly serving. She said repeal would honor "the values they fight for on the battlefield.''

Repeal of that law, and the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy implementing it, are widely supported by senior Defense Department officials and by a broad majority of military service members as well as by the public. But repeal has been buffeted by a series of unrelated political and legislative maneuverings that have kept its supporters on edge for months.

Pending in the Senate is a bill introduced last weekend by mavericks Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine. Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, elected last January to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat, told me over the weekend he also intends to vote for repeal. Approval would send it to the White House for President Obama's signature. As a presidential candidate and as president, Obama had vowed to work for repeal.

The Lieberman-Collins bill came after Senate Republicans refused to end a filibuster aimed at preventing the DADT measure and the rest of the mammoth defense budget bill, from coming to the floor for debate. The House had approved repeal as part of the defense budget package last May.

Opponents of repeal took heart from the testimony earlier this month of the military chiefs, three of whom told the Senate Armed Services Committee that they needed more time to prepare their troops to get used to serving with openly gay or lesbian military members.

Unless the Senate acts this month, it is likely the courts will order an immediate repeal, an outcome Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said would lead to chaos and precisely the kind of disruption of morale and combat readiness many critics of repeal have feared. He has urged Congress to repeal the law now, giving the Pentagon time to implement the change in an orderly fashion.
If courts order an immediate repeal, the Pentagon would be required to allow gays to serve openly in front-line infantry combat units, where the resistance is expected to be the highest.

Gates acknowledged greater resistance to repeal among those units. But he cited evidence from a year-long Defense Department study which found that troops who have served alongside a gay or lesbian service member said they experienced little or no impact on their unit's cohesion or performance.

Gen. Jim Amos, the outspoken commandant of the Marine Corps, this week repeated his opposition to repealing the current law, arguing that it would distract Marines in the midst of combat. "Distractions cost Marines lives,'' Amos growled in a session with reporters.