Justice was done. A wrong was righted. Discrimination was overcome.
Not that that was ever the way to bet.
The end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was nearly as bizarre, in its way, as the law itself — which shamelessly insisted that gay men and women could serve honorably in the military only by living a lie.
It was strange enough to watch Joe Lieberman, a pariah to most liberals, emerge as the hero of the day, joining with Republican Susan Collins as forces behind the bill to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell.
It was stranger still to see Harry Reid, who seemed to have bungled the entire affair, emerge as the master strategist in getting the bill past the byzantine rules of the dysfunctional U.S. Senate.
And it was entirely unexpected to find Barack Obama, a month after his party’s well-chronicled shellacking, back in the game. Who would have thought the lame-duck Congress could have legs? But here was Obama signing his compromise tax-cut bill one day and pushing through the all-but-lost don’t ask, don’t tell repeal the next — even as Charles Krauthammer, the conservatives’ favorite sage, was anointing him as a lock to win re-election in 2012.
But here’s the strangest thing of all: The main reason DADT was repealed was because the great majority of Americans thought it was time.
In America, in 2010, you don’t fire people because they’re born gay. Who doesn’t know that? If you don’t believe me, ask your children. For that matter, you can ask Ken Buck. There was simply no rationale for keeping gays and lesbians from openly serving their country. The arguments — the talk of “distractions” and of showers and of foxholes — were the ones made by people who didn’t understand that the world had changed without them.
As the momentum shifted and the chances for repeal became clear, the right thing suddenly seemed like the only thing that could be done. It was so obvious. And yet, this was the United States Senate.
That means getting the bill passed and on its way to Obama’s desk required 60 votes to overcome the latest in an endless series of filibusters. Incredibly, the bill breezed by with 63 votes, including six from Republicans. Two more Republicans came over for the final vote, putting themselves on the right side of history, a move that used to be called, after the Civil War, “getting right with Lincoln.”
Not that everything was right. On the same day DADT won, the DREAM Act lost — because it got only 55 votes, which is the modern-day Senate’s version of losing. What this proved was that illegal immigration, particularly in the time of a bad economy, remains a wedge issue. Not that it’s necessarily a winning issue.
Many of the Republicans who voted against the DREAM Act have supported it in the past. The five Democrats who voted against it — actually only four since Joe Manchin of West Virginia didn’t even bother to show up to vote — were from conservative states. If the five Democrats had voted for the bill, the DREAM Act would be law.
The bill shouldn’t have been controversial, except that it was. Opponents called the bill amnesty and liked to say that nothing should be done about illegal immigration until either border security is fixed or you’re guaranteed that no one will ever ask you again if you want to press 2 at the ATM.
The bill would have allowed kids who were brought here illegally by their parents — who had no say in coming here and who now have no other country — to have a path to citizenship if they go to college or serve in the military. Instead, we punish the children for the sins of the fathers and mothers and pretend that’s the American thing to do.
In the case of don’t ask, don’t tell, we couldn’t pretend that it was any longer the American way. If you watched John McCain leading the fight against the bill, you saw an angry man who was very much — to put it nicely — out of touch. That may not be exactly the legacy he was hoping for.
All you have to do is go to the polls to see how the world has changed. In the latest Gallup poll, 67 percent said they favored repeal of DADT.
Or you could go to the Pentagon’s survey of those in the military and find that 84 percent of Marines in combat who had knowingly served with gays thought repeal would be no problem.
If that doesn’t work for you, try McCain’s daughter Megan, who supports repeal, or his wife, Cindy, who says she doesn’t support repeal but who made an anti-bullying short film that makes clear she does.
Seventeen years ago, Bill Clinton tried to implement the radical notion that gays should serve openly in the military — in the way that anyone else could. Now the idea is so unradical that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs enthusiastically endorses it.
And when the Marine commandant, Gen. James Amos, tried to argue that gays shouldn’t serve openly, he pointed to Marines who had lost limbs in battle, as if we should see some clear connection. In the end, it was a connection that, as far as I could tell, only John McCain could see.
When the vote was in — and the bill had passed — supporters cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote about the arc of history inevitably bending toward justice.
He must have been right. It even got through the doors of the lame-duck Senate and out again.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
