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HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS SOONER FFFFFFFFFFFFFF STUPID FINALS

House Passes 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Repeal Amendment, Senate Bill Advances

234-194 is still far too close, but I'll take it. I liked the speech given by the House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (embedded in the link above); he hit on most of the good stuff, and he hit it hard. Wish I'd been able to catch the actual broadcast last week—I'll probably be wasting some time today that should be spent on essays looking up more speeches. Probably even speeches by the opponents, if only to piss myself off at their illogic, hypocrisy, and blatant denial of the basic human rights that this country is supposed to hold sacred. All of the parallels in rhetoric to the advocates of racial segregation in the military during the Civil Rights movement, god, it's like these people are copy-pasting, and it just doesn't hold water. Didn't then, doesn't now.

The majority of the American public, the majority of those currently serving the military, and a good number of former and current military leaders support the repeal, so I'm...cautiously hopeful? -__- With numbers like that it should be in the friggin' bag, but, y'know. Things happen. Grrrr.

Anyway. There's still a long ways to go—through the Senate and the inevitable filibuster attempt by Senate Republicans, and even if it passes there the repeal's success is still contingent upon the results of the Pentagon's study on its possible impact, including input from troops in the actual armed forces. And then the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have to certify that repealing DADT won’t have negative effects on the military’s fighting readiness. (Which...-__- it still boggles my mind why anyone thinks it would.)

Bearing all of that in mind...oh please, please, please, please.

We fell down on Prop 8 in California—hence the 'grrrrr'—and that still stings like hell (also I just found out that one of my best friends here at college voted for that. :| What the actual hell, Friend A), so I know it's far from a sure thing and I'm wary of getting overly excited about this too soon—but it's so hard not to! Quoting an observation by [livejournal.com profile] elspethdixon, "The three cornerstones of citizenship are voting, civil marriage, and military service (I know, because the Reconstruction-era political posters in my grad school advisor's office told me so). Now we're halfway to having two out of three."

We should have all of them—like, yesterday—but it's progress.

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July 2020

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