Eideard

Handcuffed Gay members of the military protest President Obama’s inaction
Daylife/AP PHoto used by permission

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay members of the military is unconstitutional, a federal judge in California has ruled.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion [.pdf] issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military…

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

“The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ act infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members in many ways,” she wrote. “In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ act was necessary to significantly further the government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden…”

The decision is among a number of recent rulings that suggest a growing judicial skepticism about measures that discriminate against homosexuals, including rulings against California’s ban on same-sex marriage and a Massachusetts decision striking down a federal law forbidding the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage…

The suit was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay organization. The group’s executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, pronounced himself “delighted” with the ruling, which he called “not just a win for Log Cabin Republican service members but all American service members…”

Richard Socarides, a lawyer who served as an adviser to the Clinton administration on gay issues when the policy was passed into law, said the legal action was long overdue. “The president has said he opposes the policy, yet he has defended it in court. Now that he’s lost, and resoundingly so, he must stop enforcing it.”

Our president will probably dump responsibility into the collective Congressional lap – whose members will sort themselves out along traditional American political lines: The bigots will assemble their collection of code words and hold press conferences defending their bigotry. The cowards will assemble their collection of do-nothing code words and decry bigotry – and fail to do a damned thing about it.

I don’t know of very many principled members of Congress who will actually stand up for the extension of civil rights to all Americans just because it’s their constitutional right. Do you?