The institutional leaders’ focus on other legislative priorities allowed for individual members of Congress to step up to the plate on DADT. Fresh faces in Washington were the ones who wanted action, and they continually spoke up throughout 2009 about President Obama’s campaign promise. Democratic House member Patrick J. Murphy from Pennsylvania, the first Iraq War veteran elected to Congress, was an adamant voice in calling for legislation to immediately repeal DADT. Freshman senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York acted as Murphy’s counterpart in the Senate by similarly desiring action – in her case, she wanted to offer an amendment to temporarily halt DADT for the time being. Once rumor got out about Senator Gillibrand’s plans, senior …show more content…
Although the institutional leaders backed off on the issue, it was shown that Congressman Murphy and Senator Gillibrand tried to bring it back up, and the media continued covering it, prominently focusing on the interest groups that always included DADT repeal on their radars. The main interest group involved was The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), an organization that specifically represents gay and lesbian soldiers and has a direct stake in DADT. During the period in which the DADT repeal was stuck between agenda setting and policy, the SLDN greatly intensified their lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. Their focus was on members of Congress because repealing DADT would require legislation, holding the status of a federal statute. The group additionally publicly called on the president to follow up on his promise when its director, Aubrey Sarvis, said, “If he doesn’t speak up, he’s going to end up O.K.’ing the firing of service members for being gay” (Bumiller “In Military”). On the other side of the aisle, the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative interest group invested in defense policy, sponsored an open letter with 1,000 retired officers to President Obama, sharing their concerns over the effect of a DADT repeal …show more content…
Congressman Murphy and Senator Gillibrand advocated their individual agendas and fought for what they believed in, reminding fellow members of Congress of the problem that was defined by Obama on the campaign trail. The interest groups that had supported President Obama helped him secure the LGBT vote in his victory, and demanded his follow-through in governing. And although many media organizations put out editorials endorsing a repeal of DADT, the objective journalism was more important in accurately reporting that President Obama was suddenly gun-shy about his campaign promise, leaving many bewildered. The statistic was that nearly 13,000 homosexual people were discharged from military service because of DADT, and media accounts turned that statistic into real stories of people and interest groups that wanted a change. By objectively focusing on the sheer impact of DADT and the story on the ground as the institutional leaders were putting it off, the media fought for the truth. The outside factors of interest groups and the media, along with the couple members of Congress serving as inside players, continued to shape the path of a possible DADT repeal in its stagnant period. These forces proved to be most important in these beginning stages of agenda setting and policy formulation, and were arguably successful in getting
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
As his second term comes to a close, your president is milking his gay agenda for all it’s worth. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced the U.S. Navy will bestow its highest honor by naming a warship for former gay rights activist and the first openly gay to be elected to public office as a San Francisco city commissioner, Harvey Milk.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman implemented discharge policies for homosexual service members in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This would allow military leaders to discharge any service member who was thought to be homosexual. In 1992, during President Bill Clinton’s campaign, he promises to lift that ban. Not being able to do just that, President Clinton issued a directive referred to as ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’. This stated that no service member should be asked about their sexual orientation. Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote the article “Gay Men and Women in the Military Disrupt Unit Cohesion” in 2009 right after President Clinton was again calling for the end of forcing homosexuals to live in secret. In his article he states that homosexuals living openly in the military will take away from military effectiveness and put the other service member’s lives in danger. Throughout most of the article he uses other resources, polls and opinions on the matter verses clearly stating his own. Most of the resources he uses are military connected or
In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people have dedicated themselves in fighting for
because the right to abort, whatever one thinks of it, is not found in the
Somehow and somewhere they received the message that the lives of gay people are not as worthy of respect, dignity and honor as the lives of other people (HRC 3).
I always knew they would be accepting.” Gloria Vanderbilt’s celebrity TV Journalist Anderson Cooper came out in 2012 and received nothing but love and support from his mother. Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman was well known for his stand against gay marriage, that is until his son announced that he was gay in the year 2011. In 2013 he changed his position on the matter. In a column for The Columbus Dispatch, he wrote, “I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married.”
This statement had caused a huge dispute between the SANBS and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA)
In the early years of 2009 to 2010 the political process pushed health care through legislation led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Health care and government, 2013). This process was extraordinarily tiring, as many defenders of the bills passing were present. Many congressional members “dug their heels in”, and wanted to slow down the process even more as confusion about the bill was posed (Health care and government, 2013). Despite opposition by many sides of the American people, a Democrat-dominated House of Representatives passed the bill and the Affordable Care Act was signed into action on March 21, 2010 (Hogberg, 2013). Indeed, all three branches of government were instrumental with the passing the Affordable Care Act into place.
Rich, C., Schutten, J., & Rogers, R. A. (2012). “Don't Drop the Soap”: Organizing Sexualities in the Repeal of the US Military's “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” Policy. Communication Monographs, 79(3), 269-291. doi:10.1080/03637751.2012.697633
go to the police, or maybe to the government? What if the police and government
The article from NBC New York titled “NY Legalizes Gay Marriage” discusses the process by which same sex marriage was legalized, and the reactions that followed this event. In
From the mothers and fathers of the daughters and sons in the military to the friends that are left back home when someone enlists and prepares on their journey, this film provides a starting point to influence conversation’s about the sexual violence and injustice prevalent across the DOD. The film speaks out to the audience’s emotions by delivering jaw-dropping statistics all while providing a strong ethical basis of trustworthy resources, interviews, and statistics. This documentary is a great example of how using pathos, ethos and logos to implore an audience to question how the DOD reacts to MST. By combining all these rhetoric appeals, Kirby is able to convince the audience that there is sexual misconduct in the military and there is no evidence to prove that they are doing anything about
In America we have always preached the act of freedom of speech, and free will but yet we still feel it’s necessary to tell a women when and how to have a baby. Having a baby should always be the woman’s choice. No man no woman should have the right to step in and make that decision for her. How can someone who knows nothing of your past or present struggles tell you, you have no choice but to have this baby why, because abortion is now illegal, how would you feel? Abortion is the act of terminating a fetus within your first 28 weeks of pregnancy. The issue revolving should abortion be legal or illegal has been on ongoing headache for centuries now. I believe abortion has become such a big controversy because we have allowed others to voice their own opinions regarding their religion and personal feelings to convince the world that abortion is wrong and that every baby deserves a chance, when America should not be allowed to make that decision for anyone.
The initiative would have required the termination of gay school teachers and officials from their positions. According to Dyck & Pearson-Merkowitz, in June of 1978, local politician Harvey Milk gave a speech following the Gay Freedom Day Parade. In his speech, Harvey stated “Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, and the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives. I know that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booths” (Dyck & Pearson-Merkowitz, 2012). When it comes to voting, the public pays a great deal of attention to social media and advertising. While media may help to influence peoples decision in the voting booth, interaction with the gay community would help them to understand and make them less likely to support policies viewed as restricting gay rights. According to Dyck & Pearson-Merkowitz, twenty nine states have passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. On the other hand, only five states (Massachusetts, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut) allow gay marriage. In each case, these laws were passed by courts and legislatures. Simply put, the ability