Can anyone tell me that DADT is over

[mitchtv]

I've heard a lot of chatter, but no new gays in military . A few small personal victories I know of, but still bullshit at the top . Can a repub president stop it?

[TheWraith]

1. No, a Republican President could not stop it.

In theory, DADT is still standing policy until 60 days after the certification of training (although in practice, it has been frozen). The certification is probably going to happen within the next month or two.

However, it's not reversible: to reinstate DADT would require an act of Congress, meaning either a bill passed for that purpose or an amendment to a defense bill. And passing all the hurdles required for new legislation, such as finding 60 people in the Senate willing to give it a hearing. So in short, you would require a Republican President, Republican Senate, and Republican House.

[mitchtv]

2. Pawlenty will have a tough time if he wins

the dems will allow thrmselves to be pushed around, however

[TheWraith]

6. There won't be a Republican in office until 2017 at least.

By that time, it'll be a completely dead issue to all but the hardcore Republican base.

[msongs]

3. it is not over yet. nt

[dsc]

4. Actually the President could decide to out right ban gays

if he or she so chose. Whatever replaces DADT will be an executive creation and can be recreated by the next executive.

[mitchtv]

5. as I suspected

[TheWraith]

7. How do you figure that?

I don't see any path for such a policy to be enacted. DADT narrowly survived a court challenge to constitutionality solely based on the justification that it was necessary for military discipline; with that having been established as not the case long before any other president could come to office, any attempt to draft after the fact regulations would be thrown out.

[dsc]

8. that is an entirely different kettle of fish

and SCOTUS hasn't ruled yet. Certainly a President Palin or Bachman or whomever could indeed issue a blanket ban on gays if they chose to do so. would it survive court challenge, that is something to be seen. The court is quite deferential to the military so it well might.

[TheWraith]

9. No, they haven't, but the existing precedent is pretty one sided.

And the current SCOTUS has the same fundamental makeup as when Lawrence vs. Texas was decided, whereas this is even more obviously an equal protection issue. When a lower court took up the issue of whether Lawrence applied to the military, the existing congressional "finding" that homosexuality was detrimental to military discipline was the only thing that they hung their rather circular decision not to strike down Article 125 of the UCMJ on.

In any event, there will never be a President Palin or Bachmann, and almost certainly no Republican in the White House before 2017, so there's even more time for the current policy to solidify.

[dsc]

10. all but three of the current contenders for the GOP nod

(Karger, Johnson, and Huntsman) are on record as favoring a reinstatement of DADT or outright banning of gays. The case which scares me is the Yamache case from some years back where the Air Force was permitted to ban Yamaches even when they were worn under other hats. I think that is directly on point.

[TheWraith]

11. You're thinking of Goldman v. Weinberger, 1986.

I understand what you mean, but I wouldn't exactly worry about it at the moment. For starters, Goldman concerned clothing, which is a much lower standard (even for religiously mandated clothing, and even in civilian law) than personal qualities. Imagine the distinction between a SCOTUS case saying that a restaurant could ban people wearing baggy clothing, versus the same restaurant trying to ban black people. Different standards.

On top of that, the Reagan-era court had a number of decisions like that which tended toward narrowing the scope of the bill of rights, particularly first amendment protections of religion, whereas subsequent years, most particularly the last decade, have seen a return to a more appropriate broader interpretation of constitutional protections: Snyder, McDonald, even Citizens United takes a broader interpretation, albeit not one we like.