American Moves Forward on Gays, Republicans Not So Much

Mary Kate Cary, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush explains that Americans have become much more accepting of gays over the last 17 years many of her fellow Republicans act as if time hasn’t changed.

Think about what’s happened in American pop culture over the last 17 years, when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” first was voted into law by Congress –from Ellen DeGeneres coming out of the closet, to the success of the series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; to the films Milk and Brokeback Mountain each winning multiple Oscars. I know in my own life, I’ve seen a sea change in the way friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are gay are treated by society. Everyone I know in my suburban, carpooling existence has at least one friend or a loved one who is gay–something that wasn’t necessarily true 20 years ago.

In his State of the Union address, the President announced that he would work with Congress to repeal the ban on openly gay Americans serving in the military, as the Canadians, British, French, South Africans and Israelis have done. At yesterday’s hearing on the matter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the question is not whether the U.S. military will enact the change, but rather how it will. (His proposal: a high-level working group to make recommendations and move to implement a new policy within the next year, pending Congressional approval.)….

Why more Republicans can’t seem to see that is beyond me. Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard takes a slap at banning Don’t Ask “because it is in some abstract way ‘the right thing.’” He continues: “It isn’t a change an appreciable number of Americans are clamoring for. And even if one understood this change to be rectifying an injustice, the fact is it’s an injustice that affects perhaps a few thousand people in a nation of 300 million.” So, since minorities are just that–minorities–it’s okay to discriminate against them?

Sen. John McCain said that he’d change his stance and support repealing the ban if the top brass supported it. Well, here was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs–not exactly the bottom brass–endorsing it because of what it says about the integrity of our entire military. Did McCain change his mind, as he said he would? No, according to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who was covering the hearing: “McCain and four Republican colleagues left before the hearing ended, and the other six GOP members of the panel didn’t show up at all.” As a Republican, that made me cringe.