Obama to sign end to military gay ban

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Breitbart:

The United States stood on the cusp of letting gays serve openly in its military for the first time, as the US Congress sent President Barack Obama a bill to bring about the historic shift.

Senators voted 65-31 to approve House-passed legislation to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" compromise of 1993 requiring gay soldiers to keep quiet about their sexual orientation or face dismissal.

"It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed," said Obama, who vowed during his 2008 White House bid to lift the ban.

Obama was expected to sign the measure this week with great fanfare, launching a White House and Pentagon certification process to ensure the smoothest possible transition at a time when Washington is fighting two wars.

Eight of the White House's Republican foes backed the change -- perhaps the biggest such shift in the US military since racial integration began in 1948 -- while three Republicans and one Democrat missed the vote.

The measure, its passage assured when it cleared a procedural hurdle by a 63-33 margin earlier, fueled bitterly divisive debate in the already polarized Senate.

"The first casualty in the war in Iraq was a gay soldier. The mine that took off his right leg didn't give a darn whether he was gay or straight. We shouldn't either," Democratic Senator Carl Levin said before the ballot.

"We cannot let these patriots down. Their suffering should end. It will end with the passage of this bill. I urge its passage today," said Levin, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"It isn't broke, don't fix it," countered Senator John McCain, the top Republican on Levin's panel and Obama's defeated 2008 White House rival and a fierce foe of lifting the ban.

"To somehow allege that it has harmed our military is not justified by the facts," McCain said. "Don't think that it won't be at great cost."
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While I have no problem with gays in the military, this is back-door social engineering on the part of politicians. It sends the wrong message to gay service members IMO by saying that they are political cannon fodder for someone else's pet cause.

[Sabre86]

The military is dead, dying a slow, painful death, just like someone who has AIDS.