President Obama Lies About “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

By Christopher Lamparello-


On Tuesday, October 12, in a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips issued a landmark decision which found that the military policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was unconstitutional. Proclaiming that it violated both the First and Fifth Amendments, she issued a worldwide injunction against the policy, forbidding the United States government from continuing to enforce it.
Most of our community, along with our friends and allies, thought that it was time to celebrate. We thought that the policy had finally been relegated to that well-worn “dustbin of history.” After all, our President had promised to repeal it and had boldly declared that “this policy will end, and it will end on my watch.”
Apparently, the President’s watch is off a little bit. Indeed, we realized that our jubilance over the ruling was short-lived when the Obama administration declared that the justice department had “no choice” but to appeal the ruling, and that it was its “obligation” to do so.
However, the truth is quite different. In fact, the Justice Department is well within its rights to refuse to appeal any court ruling, and it has done just that in a number of important cases.
On October 1, 2004, for example, it was reported that the Justice Department “decided not to appeal a U.S. District Court decision to allow Oracle Corporation to proceed with its 15-month-old hostile takeover bid for applications rival PeopleSoft Incorporated.”
On December 19, 2008, the Justice Department decided not to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that blocked oil and gas drilling in a sensitive riverside area in northern Michigan.
On April 30, 2010, the Hartford Courant reported that the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to appeal a wrongful imprisonment verdict which awarded $102 million to four Boston men who “spent decades in jail” due to the false testimony of “a cabal of gangsters and corrupt FBI agents.”
Most recently, on Monday, October 10 (a mere five days ago), the Justice Department announced that it would not appeal a court ruling by Judge Lewis Kaplan that prohibited a key witness from testifying in the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first former Guantanamo Bay prison detainee scheduled for a civilian trial in U.S. federal court.
Noted homophobe Tony Perkins (of the so-called “Family Research Council”) issued an October 14 press release that praised the Obama Administration for it’s decision to seek an emergency stay of the decision, a stay which would enable our government (the same one which countless gays and lesbians have risked their lives to defend) to resume removing service members from our armed forces, merely on account of their sexual orientation.
What other conclusion can we come to other than to acknowledge that we’ve been lied to; we’ve been used? Referring to himself, our esteemed president once told us that we should “keep holding me accountable.” Indeed, that is something that we must do. This administration no longer deserves our money or our votes, unless it begins acting more like an ally than an adversary.

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