Integrity News

When I joined the Army, I was advised that no verbal promise made by my recruiter would be honored, only what was written into my contract. In today’s world - in business and politics - that’s pretty good advice. Well, SLDN sent letters to both the Republicans and the Democrats requesting that they include language in their national platforms that supports the repeal of Don’t ask, Don’t tell. Well, the Dems listened and their draft contains the following plank:

At a time when the military is having a tough time recruiting and retaining troops, it is wrong to deny our country the service of brave, qualified people. We support the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” and the implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation.

That’s great that the Dems have decided to move forward on this, especially since fifteen years ago, the Democratic leadership in the Congress and the White House were the ones responsible for codifying the homosexual conduct policy in the first place.

Now, if one takes the time to review the Libertarian Party platform, you’ll see that we in the LP have included such language for quite a while. The current platform reads:

Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the rights of individuals by government, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws.

In the previous version of the platform, it was more specific regarding the homosexual conduct policy:

We call for the end of the Defense Department practice of discharging armed forces personnel for homosexual conduct. We further call for retraction of all less-than-honorable discharges previously assigned for such reasons and deletion of such information from military personnel files.

Regardless of who was first, it is great to see that there are some issues we can agree on, like 75% of Americans. It reminds me that if you talk to real people - not the pundits on TV and radio and not high-profile bloggers, but average joes working regular jobs in places like Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, or Omaha - most of them don’t believe gay people, or Hispanic people or any other definable group are out to destroy America. They aren’t liberals or conservatives, they’re just themselves - John or Joe, Linda or Susan. And they know that most gay people just want to be themselves, too. And that kinda common sense ought to count for something.