Levin: President Obama Could Address Gays in the Military During State of the Union Speech
EmailABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Will President Obama announce new policy regarding the sexual orientation of people serving in the military during his State of the Union address Wednesday? Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Armed Services Committee thinks so. Levin told reporters today that he has delayed plans to hold Senate hearings to examine the current “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy at the request of administration officials. Why would they want him to hold off? The officials Levin talked to said they expect the President will address the issue of homosexuals serving in the military during the State of the Union Address. "I don’t know if it was the White House, but somebody representing them from the Pentagon said that the President was expected, they thought, to state that policy in the State of the Union and they thought it made more sense for him to state the policy and for us to have a hearing right before the policy with the people who will be defending that policy. They don’t know what it is,” said Levin, who added that he hopes any new policy is well-thought-out and that senior military leaders are on board. “It will be helpful to have the commander in chief and his military leaders support something because it’s going to be a lot more difficult to change if they don’t,” said Levin. To recap – it is not entirely clear that the President will address the policy in the State of the Union Address. Even if he does, it is unclear what that policy will be. But it is a fact that Sen. Levin has held off holding Senate hearings on the issue because he is under the impression that it will come up in the State of the Union Address.
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Now THAT will make help his popularity. How many liberal states have rejected gay marriage now? And I personally would be more likely to favor that than ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” based on what I’ve heard from servicemen.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2010, 5:12 pm 5:12 pm
So, Obama needs a boost so bad that he’s going to actually *keep* a promise? He was obviously saving this for an emergency.
Posted by: MaggieL | January 25, 2010, 5:17 pm 5:17 pm
Purely political move – he figures he can get that part of his base to stop taking shots at him.
Posted by: trinket59 | January 25, 2010, 5:22 pm 5:22 pm
I don’t think the bigots have to worry too much. President Obama will either a) not say a word about DADT in his address, or b) announce a “change” in the policy that makes minimal adjustment to how the policy is enforced while still not allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly and honestly in uniform.
Posted by: Rich | January 25, 2010, 5:31 pm 5:31 pm
Sen. Levin’s comments are emlamatic of Obama’s biggest problem-a dysfunctional embarassing Democratic U.S. Senate caucus. By all means, Carl, let’s avoid dealing with the economy and health care reform so we can go off on divisive tangent. I mean you folks did such a good job in the past year.
Posted by: B. Bear | January 25, 2010, 6:06 pm 6:06 pm
Servicemen and women have no problem serving with gays. The most recent poll showed that over 75% said they have no problem with gays.
The vast majority of the country is also in favor of stopping this discriminatory policy. We are firing experts in code breaking and foreign languages for something totally unrelated to their jobs.
Ending this discriminatory policy, much like integrating the military between blacks and whites years ago, will take some effort initially, but will soon make us stronger and more united.
I hope Obama announces that he is allowing our brave gay soldiers to be truthful about who they are and that he wants Congress to move quickly on changing the policy through legislation as well.
Posted by: Marine Vet | January 25, 2010, 6:43 pm 6:43 pm
OK! As long as you put two gays on a job or in a fox hole; then you put a female and a male in the ssme position and duty. Same supervisory wise. Check out the number of veterans who profess to having been abuse by their same sex soldier mate. You will be supprosed. Do you really think a male and a female who are lovers will be assigned quarters and jobs the same as two same sex service members? No way.
Posted by: wick10 | January 25, 2010, 7:27 pm 7:27 pm
Are you Wall Street, Main street, rich, middle class, Hispanic, Black, White, gay, small business, BIG pharma, big oil, big hospital.., a fat cat banker, an insurance company, first time homebuyer, veteran, retired, union member, Nebraskan, undocumented, unemployed, uninsured,foreclosure victim…
or are you simply an American?
divide and conquer.
Posted by: cindy | January 25, 2010, 7:39 pm 7:39 pm
A year late.
Posted by: jarjar | January 25, 2010, 8:12 pm 8:12 pm
Marine Vet wrote
“Servicemen and women have no problem serving with gays. The most recent poll showed that over 75% said they have no problem with gays.”
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That’s total b.s, The Army Times conducted a poll last year and over 80% said that the policy should stay the same and that 25% said if don’t ask don’t tell is changed they wouldn’t reenlist….. propaganda like yours only works when the population is ignorant.
Posted by: sam | January 25, 2010, 9:11 pm 9:11 pm
Obama needs to address parts of the rheotric speeches prior to the election such as: Penalizing companies that send jobs over seas; how he is going to reduce the deficit; new jobs; people that are retired, that will not have to pay social security taxes again when they return to work; deporting illegals. What a concept for Obama!!! Get us out of the wars on two fronts; Try something new such as placing troops on the border of Mexico.
Posted by: Mim | January 25, 2010, 9:38 pm 9:38 pm
well that’s tossing a dog a bone isn’t it.
i wonder if his gay base will be offended by the fact that his back had to be against the wall and he had to find himself with nothing to present in the state of the union before he took care of his campaign promise to them?
i think anyone who wants to fight for their country should be able to without question and if they can accommodate women what is the difference?
the bigger question is spending freeze. if he whips out the butcher knife after we’ve heard so much about his skillful use of that scapel…
Posted by: rebekah | January 26, 2010, 9:47 am 9:47 am
How does repeating the mistakes of Clinton’s 1st term help Obama? How? His problem isn’t Republicans… It’s his base, and he knows it. They are sabotaging his Presidency, and he so far is letting it happen.
Clinton was smart enough to rebuke them and got a second term. Will Obama learn from history?
Posted by: jafo | January 26, 2010, 12:14 pm 12:14 pm
Sam– when you refer to a poll, please ensure that the poll is even close to being valid. Those who subscribe to the military times are senior military leadership most of whom are behind the times quite frankly. In any case, the bottom line is that Military Times polls from its own subscribers, not from the military as a whole. Their results are invalid because they do no sample across the military evenly, period. On the other hand, the polls such as Zogby are conducted where the data is considered valid. I’m an active duty military operations research analyst currently serving in Afghanistan. I know what I’m talking about.
Aside from those things, I really have a problem being in an organization that says it values and respects others, but doesn’t practice this. I also have a problem with an organization that says it cares about it’s soldiers and their families, unless they are a gay soldier. In this case, leadership doesn’t want to know. We can’t take care of our people if we put up walls such as this. We bludgeoning trust and respect amongst the ranks with this undignified law. People who complain about gays being together in foxholes, etc. says alot about the lack of real leadership in our ranks. Put mission first and always take care of soldiers and everything else will fall into place. We are better than this.
Posted by: Ranger in Afghanistan | January 28, 2010, 12:13 am 12:13 am