Give up on repeal? Not now, not ever

Tomorrow the Senate may finally get to debate and vote on repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. A determined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has put the standalone repeal bill the House passed 250-175 on Wednesday (H.R. 2965) before the Senate, along with a cloture petition to cut off Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) endless and endlessly embarrassing filibuster.

So now the ball is in the Senate’s court — but it will take more than a dogged Majority Leader to see repeal through. A simple majority does not rule in the Senate. Repeal of the “Don’t ask” law prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military still needs a super majority of sixty votes to cross the finish line.

Only last week a minority of senators led by an entrenched John McCain thwarted the will of 58 senators who were prepared to debate and vote on “Don’t ask”. In recent weeks several senators have said that before voting on repeal they wanted to see the Pentagon’s report and have hearings. The Pentagon report — one of the most comprehensive reports and surveys ever compiled by the Defense Department on a personnel matter — has now been before the Senate for more than two weeks. It provides sensible and solid recommendations on how to make repeal work. Hearings on those recommendations have been held, but the Republican minority insisted there be a vote on the tax bill first, before taking up the defense bill that provides for our troops, our nation’s defense, and for repeal of “Don’t ask”.

Well, the Senate passed the tax bill Wednesday, repeal has been stripped from the defense bill so it can move, and Defense Secretary Gates again implored the Senate to act this year to repeal “Don’t ask” before the courts do it. Two of the principal architects of “Don’t ask” in 1993, former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, have called for repeal. What more will it take?

Will there be another round of excuses to avoid a vote? Will opponents of repeal once again move the goal posts?

There are no more places to hide. There are no more excuses for delay. If senators support repeal, this is the time to vote yes on the bill from the House. Its language is identical to S. 4023, introduced last week by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and, indeed, is welcomed by those two senators, but now all senators need to get behind the House bill. If the Senate passes it without amendment, the repeal measure can go directly to the president for signature. As Defense Secretary Roberts Gates put it, “if not now, when?”

When I was an 18-year-old rifleman in the Army I pulled guard duty on the demilitarized zone in South Korea, only a mile or so from the North. As a young soldier I learned that you never give up; you stay with the mission. You do it for your buddies and you do it for your country. Sometimes the task may take years. LGBT service members have had to bear the heavy burden of “Don’t ask” for seventeen years, and still they serve their country with honor and often with distinction.

After the Senate vote last week dishonoring their service, the 66,000 gay and lesbians service members who defend us every day reported for duty, even though “Don’t ask” is an affront to them as individuals as well as a blight on our integrity as a nation. If senators refuse to vote for repeal now, they will be standing with Sen. McCain, who is shamelessly fighting to continue this blatant and ugly discrimination.

But let there be no doubt. If the body of the Senate will not join Sens. Lieberman and Collins, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in acting before adjournment, repeal advocates are prepared to keep fighting in the courts. On Monday Servicemembers Legal Defense Network filed a complaint in federal district court seeking the reinstatement of former Air Force Major Mike Almy, who was deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the reinstatement of two other highly decorated service members discharged under “Don’t ask”. If the Senate fails to act on repeal in these final days of the 111th Congress, next year we will file litigation in behalf of young people who would enter the armed forces to serve our country but for the “Don’t ask” law.  But the litigation need not continue, not if the Senate acts.

Like Sen. McCain, we shall never, ever give up. But unlike Sen. McCain, whose fusty views seem frozen in time past, we have seen the future and it plays. And we shall prevail.

Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and now executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a group working to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Sarvis is the former chief counsel for the Senate Commerce Committee and later executive vice president of Verizon Communications.