Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10

It is worth mentioning again that 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is not a law. 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' was an arrangement made in 1993 by then-President Clinton in order to satisfy his homosexual constituency. A law does exist, however, that prohibits homosexuals from serving in the U.S. Military. It is

Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10—the homosexual exclusion law passed by both houses of Congress in 1993 with veto-proof, bi-partisan majorities. The flawed cornerstone principle of "don’t ask, don’t tell," to the effect that homosexual orientation is not a bar to military service, is conspicuously absent. Instead, the plain meaning of the law and legislative history affirmed the classic principle that "Homosexuality is incompatible with military service."

It is also worth mentioning again Frank Gaffney's article which points out what Obama is trying to do. Obama wants the repeal of the aforementioned law, Section 654, Title 10, which is "a statutory prohibition on openly homosexual individuals serving in the U.S. military." There are 15 points in this prohibiton which state why homosexuals should not serve in the U.S. military. You will find the law here.

What Obama can't get by fiat, he will seek to get by arm-twisting and the small incremental changes that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are agreeing to. They seem more than willing to do the president's bidding. Here is Mullen going on about his personal views regarding homosexuality in the military. (Mullen, spouting PC 'rights' rhetoric, isn't questioned by the mainstream media as to the relevancy of his 'personal' views on a matter of national interest. Recall the outcry of criticism when a former chairman, Peter Pace, expressed his views on the same topic. )

Lest there's any doubt about the far-reaching negative effects of open homosexuality in the military, Richard Black describes the threat to over-all discipline and moral conduct that homosexuality can pose. (Interestingly, Fort Hood, TX was the site of one such disciplinary breakdown.) Colonel Beady describes here how advancing the cause of homosexuality in the military has the potential to destroy the military community which tends to hold traditional values regarding marriage and family.

The push to have gays openly serve in the military is not about equality, rights or fighting discrimination. It is about the will of a few forcing disordered social policy on our country regardless of the cost.

Gays in the Military--Bad News

On the matter of gays serving openly in the military, Blackfive has published a disappointing and mis-guided opinion. It may or may not be 'silly for gay service members to pretend they're something that they're not,' but that isn't the issue.

Although Americans are pressured to believe otherwise, repealing the mis-named 'Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy'(DADT)has nothing to do with the desire of gays to serve their country. They can do that now if they are truly dedicated to service and to a cause greater than themselves. Nor does DADT have anything to do with rights. As others have pointed out, no one has a constitutional or God-given right to serve in the military any more than any of us has a constitutional or God-given right to be admitted to Harvard.

The repeal of DADT has everything to do with social engineering. The soldier has traditionally been the embodiment of manliness and manly virtue. If as a society we are willing to so pervert what it means to be a soldier by normalizing homosexuality, then we are also willing to pervert what it means to be a man. And that's what gay activists seek to do. They wish to redefine biology, defy nature and nature's God, and re-create society in their own image. Gays in the military is another step, perhaps the final one, toward re-defining normalcy and defining traditional manhood out of existence.

With a distinctly feminized and unmanly president in the White House, it is no surprise that this administration is "bludgeoning the Pentagon" and Congress to, as Frank Gaffney writes,

go along with him on the repeal, not of Bill Clinton's DADT executive order, but of a statutory prohibition on openly homosexual individuals serving in the U.S. military. But is he really up to the job of arguing that the fifteen findings why such a ban is necessary that were solemnly and deliberately enacted with President Clinton's signature somehow no longer apply?

Gaffney goes on to say,

Instead, the current law is an appropriate and necessary reflection of the realities of human nature. Sexual proclivities, especially in circumstances of forced intimacy (like foxholes, barracks, submarines, etc.), do interfere with the "good order and discipline" required if the military is to be able to recruit, retain, prepare and employ effectively in combat the sort of armed forces we must have in a dangerous world. This case will be made by more than 1100 senior retired military officers (see FlagandGeneralOfficersfortheMilitary.org.) who will speak for colleagues still in uniform who cannot easily engage in the public debate.

Family Research Council explains some of the subtle ways that the Obama administration will impose its will.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, together with Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is rolling out a "relaxed" standard on homosexuality in the military that would strip the law of its teeth while the President tries to overturn it.

They go on to explain that,

the top brass has said it will dramatically shift the process of "outing" homosexual servicemen. For starters, the military would no longer investigate a soldier's sexuality based on a "third party" account. In other words, only "flagrant violators" would be ousted--dramatically cutting down on the number of dismissals. Also, generals and admirals will be the final authorities on which soldiers are discharged after years of processing those decisions in the lower ranks. In effect, the President is saying that he may not be able to overturn the law without Congress, but he can stop enforcing it.

Besides re-defining traditional notions of manliness, FRC also points out the violence and harrassment that will accompany open homosexuality in the military.

It's interesting to note that after the Fort Hood terrorist shooting, media pundits on the conservative side denounced General Casey for his PC remarks about preserving diversity in the military. Here, now, is the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mullen, promoting an equally insidious and dangerous type of diversity and, so far, I see
no criticism of his politically correct cooperation.

All told, this is another piece of Obama's hope-and-change puzzle that needs to go down to a blazing defeat.

It's Hard For Obama

What is our president thinking? He treads softly with terrorists, apologizes to the world for America's contributions and bows to mayors. On the other hand, he turns aggressive when he scolds Supreme Court justices, and he gets tough on unborn babies by continuing to promote a health plan that will have all of us paying to abort them.

Today he commiserated with Senate Democrats about these being "tough times to hold public office." He couldn't say enough about all the hard work he and the Democrats have been doing. Who would have thought that a senator's life was full of "hard decisions," " hard work," " working hard," "doing the hard thing," " hard political decisions," problems that are "hard to solve" and that they have the "burden of working harder." The speech will likely give any sane person agita.

What is the president thinking? Nothing of particular substance. Obama is a clanging bell, a crashing gong and, under all that noise, a wimpy man.

Tim Tebow and His Super Bowl Ad

Yesterday, American Thinker published this short piece that I wrote on the upcoming Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad. With no TV, I listen to a lot of talk radio and thought it curious that such disparate talk-show hosts as Rush Limbaugh on the one hand and Mike Francesa on the other mentioned the Tebow ad. Part of Rush's showmanship is his claim to be the all-knowing, always-ahead-of-the-curve spokesman for relevant issues. I find he's always a little behind on the social issues like abortion and gay marriage, and his comments on the Tebow ad and so-called pro-choice women were just that, though he was accurate. As for Mike Francesa, he's almost always level-headed when he dips into subjects other than sports. (His interviews are always good, too!)

Blackfive Covers General Pace

Blackfive recently posted a link to this clip of General Peter Pace giving an intensely emotional speech upon accepting the Keeper of the Flame award from the Center for Security Policy. The speech is from 2004, and I'm not sure why it's circulating now (or again), but I found it interesting enough to post and see if perhaps a lone reader out there would want to offer up an opinion or two.

Back in March of 2007, Pace, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, created some fuss when he expressed his views on the immorality of adultery and homosexuality in general and in the military. (Hopefully, he'll speak up again on that point.) I was surprised to learn that Pace is a Roman Catholic of Italian-American heritage who originally hails from, of all places, Brooklyn, New York.

March for Life 2010

Why are people still converging on Washington, D.C. every January 22nd to demonstrate their opposition to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade? Because legalized abortion is one of the hallmarks of a culture that has become morally corrupt. Unlike the anti-war demonstrations of the 60s, the March for Life is not an angry protest to demand the repeal of Roe v. Wade. If it were only that, I doubt if the Mainstream Media would so assiduously resist covering it!

Rather, the March for Life is a demonstration to affirm and promote a culture of life in American society, and, if it's a protest at all, it is a protest against the secularism and utilitarianism of a culture of death. The March has an upbeat and celebratory feel to it. The optimism and excitement in the air seem to come from marchers affirming to one another as much as to the rest of the country that, ultimately, a culture of life and moral virtue will prevail in our society.

A phrase that was probably heard in many homilies and speeches on Friday is that the first right we have as human beings is the right to life. As the late Father Neuhaus said in this speech of 2008 , the pro-life movement

represents the great human rights cause of our time and all times—the cause of life. We contend, and we contend relentlessly, for the dignity of the human person, of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity—every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.

In contrast, what does a culture of death look like? It is a culture where a self-appointed group assumes for itself the task of deciding who in society has value and who doesn't. It is a culture that believes that certain individuals--such as the elderly, the infirm, the unborn, the handicapped-- have 'lives unworthy of life.' Robert George explains it as

the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself. As Leon Kass recently reminded us in a powerful address at the Holocaust Museum, it was supposedly enlightened and progressive German academics and medical people who put their nation on the road to shame more than a decade before the Nazis rose to power by promoting a doctrine of eugenics based precisely on the proposition that the lives of some human beings — such as the severely retarded — are unworthy of life.

On this past Friday, we were apparently more than 300,000 strong and said to be the largest group of marchers to date. Again this year, the number of young people, high school and college-age, was impressive. The number of priests, religious and lay people who attended the Thursday night Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine, which can hold more than 5,000, created this overflow crowd. Our own Archdiocese of New York packed a church in Bethesda, Maryland early on Friday morning, only slightly disappointed that Archbishop Dolan, who was to have celebrated the Mass, had been called away the night before to Haiti.

To navigate the D.C. subway system on the day of the March, to wait among hundreds of thousands of people for the March to begin, to march along major avenues in the heart of the nation's capital that have been shut down to regular traffic and then to look for coverage of the March in the Mainstream Media and find virtually nothing is to experience the weirdest sort of altered reality. Those in the liberal Media are a reprehensible and calculating, cowardly bunch.

They will, I suppose, continue to insist that Americans who oppose abortion are a fringe minority, but I would think the deception they engage in is going to become increasingly difficult to perpetuate as views on abortion change. Particularly among those ages 18-29 (the Millennials) and those ages 30-44 (Gen X-ers), abortion is considered to be morally wrong with a figure of 58% in the former category and 60% in the latter category. No surprise that only 51% of my generation, the Baby-Boomers, would agree.

To conclude with words from Father Neuhaus's speech,

Whether, in this great contest between the culture of life and the culture of death, we were recruited many years ago or whether we were recruited only yesterday, we have been recruited for the duration.

Imagine

Last year's March for Life occurred just two days after Barack Obama's inauguration, and the effects of Obamamania were still evident in the nation's capital as marchers assembled for the walk to the Supreme Court building. In anticipation of tomorrow's 37th anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade and this year's march, here's a video that made the rounds last year, but is always timely, I think.