Something over 13,000 soldiers were discharged between 1993 and 2011 under provisions of DADT. Perhaps another 5 times that have served, or are serving, closeted, and therefore without incident. That's 78,000 people.
Thus, doing the math, the right to serve as openly gay actually benefitted something like .5 percent-- 1 out of 200 or so-- of the US LGBT population. Some victory.
The Log Cabin Republicans may actually be gay and lesbian. But judging by their list of endorsed candidates, they are Republican first, and gay somewhere way down the line.
It is an old political axiom: it is more important to control the agenda than to control the procedure. It was a brilliant, devilish, legally risk-free piece of Republican political strategy to get that 57-40 procedural vote, failure to achieve cloture, before the election.
Some people have commented that it was boneheaded DEMOCRATIC political strategy, but that doesn't fly. Republicans counted their votes and knew they had enough to hold off Repeal until after the election, and then place the onus on a bunch of lame-ducks.
Indeed, the fact that a lame-duck Democratic Congress passed this ONE RIGHT may stiffen the resolve of the Republican knuckle-draggers in Congress to not let any other GLBT civil-rights legislation pass, and protect DOMA at all costs.
There are Republican disinformationalists about, posing as homosexual-rights activists. Be aware that they will continue to say what a great victory DADT Repeal was, as over the rest of this administration, no more gay civil rights will be achieved.
They will also stoke the fires of discontent with Mr. Obama, by any means possible, within the gay community. It may seem insanely conflicted, but these gays actually want to elect people who would permanently deny them civil rights!
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