Describing himself as "social conservative" Presidential aspirant Governor Tim Pawlenty let loose a laundry list of attacks on progressive issues in a radio interview including Roe v. Wade and marriage equality. He offered his belief Minnesota voters should be allowed to vote on other peoples' marriages.
Mostly garden variety stuff for wooing the conservative base which he was playing to. What I found rather surprising was the inclusion of his promise to work to reinstate the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
Pawlenty spoke with Bryan Fisher on American Family Association (AFA) radio. You may recall American Family Association recently making the news when Southern Poverty Law Center named them an anti-gay hate group, Pawlenty knows his audience, some of Fisher's greatest hits, courtesy of SPLC:
Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that "[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews."...Fischer has described Hitler as "an active homosexual" who sought out gays "because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough." He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into "reparative" therapy.
This is the company our future Presidential-wannabee keeps. Nice. The exchange in question begins at 4:00 mark:
Fisher: "One last question, got about 45 seconds left, put you on the hot seat one more time, we just just saw the ban on gay joining the military repealed, overturned, conservatives will be working to see that that ban is reinstated, if you become President in 2012, will you work to reinstate the prohibition on open homosexual service in the military? Would you sign such a prohibition if it got to your desk?
Pawlenty: I have been a public and repeat supporter of maintaining "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." There's a lot of reasons for that, but if you look at how the combat commanders and combat units feel about it, the results of that--those kind of surveys were different than the results that were mostly reported in the newspapers. And that is something we need to pay attention to, and I've been a public supporter of maintaining "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And I would support reinstating it as well.
My initial reaction was to roll my eyes and say, "What an asshole." And I was a little perplexed that Pawlenty thinks strategically opposing a policy change that 8 in 10 Americans supported is a route to the Presidency.
I know he's playing to his base. And we know conservatives are slow to catch on that the advent of the Google, the YouTubes and all those other tools make it hard to quietly say one thing to one group while hiding it from another. Still, I thought, "That's a winning tactic, ya think? You want to go on record with that? You know, 23 Republicans voted for repeal, too? You want to toss Collins, Brown, and your other fellow GOPers under the bus and paint them as enemies to national security?" Of course, Scorched Earth politicking is nothing new for Presidential candidates.
It was just rabble rousing, but something bugged me. There was a deeper significance, and Jamil Smith, a segment producer for the Rachel Maddow Show, put his finger on it for me. on Twitter he posted a framing that made it make more sense:
Tim Pawlenty's #DADT comment shows that homophobia is part of the Republican litmus test for looking Presidential.
Yeah. That's what it was. Regionally, the party may be getting ready to let go of hating the gays a little. But nationally? How are they going to handle that in the primaries? The wedge issue has moved. It no longer cleaves the American people, it just slices right through the Republican Party. (And yeah, that brings a little happy smile of schadenfreude to my face.)
An interesting piece on Al-Jazeera (of all places) came to my attention on Gay Acceptance: GOP's Black Swan, a reference to the popular Darren Aronofsky movie Black Swan. The story is about a ballerina, played by Natalie Portman, who in her relentless, single-minded pursuit of a role allows herself to be drawn into madness. The metaphor author Cliff Schecter draws is any softening on gay issues is seen by the GOP conservative base as a surrender to the darkest forces, as George "Rentboy" Rekkers did. This will, of course, bring inevitable doom to all, as it did for Portman.
One would almost feel sorry for many of these people, if it weren't for the fact that they're destroying innocent lives in their quest to keep their inner Black Swan at bay. But as soon as irrational fears of their own sexuality or that of members of their families or close friends starts corrupting government policy, my sympathy comes to an end.
It's a good piece. However, I think the more apt metaphor might be the dance the GOP makes with demons such as Fisher's American Family Association threatens to overtake and destroy the party with a cancer that is increasingly becoming more lethal at the ballot box.
I suggest American Family Association, and Governor Pawlenty keep their religion out of our national security policies. I would have thought out and proud Daniel Hernandez's brave rush into oncoming gunfire last week would closed the book on gays' fitness to serve in combat situations. I guess they didn't get the memo.
I'd hoped we'd see a softening of GOP attitudes to gays. And I believe in the general, we will. How candidates like Pawlenty will tack away from this kind of primary red-meat, batshit, I don't know. But let's make sure we remember so we can hold them accountable for their words. Pawlenty should be pestered in the general with questions of specific route he intends to take reinstating DADT, if only to draw attention to his fringe views.
The sad truth is President Pawlenty will not have to wait for it to come to come to his desk, or put much work into it. Kos' Kyril was among the people who explained back in May in DADT Compromise has a serious problem.
The compromise legislation will include no requirement that the Pentagon implement a non-discrimination policy.
There was no non-discrimination mandate, and it is not their intention to implement one. From the Pentagon Working Group Report:
We do not recommend that sexual orientation be placed alongside race, color, religion,sex, and national origin, as a class eligible for various diversity programs, tracking initiatives,and complaint resolution processes under the Military Equal Opportunity Program.
Absent a mandate not to discriminate, the place of LGB servicemembers is left up to the whims of the sitting Commander-in-Chief. The pre-1993 ban on gay service members was not a law, it was a DOD regulation, just as the current ban on transgender servicemembers is, which will remain as far as we know (more here.)
A reinstated ban on gay servicemembers, from a legal perspective, could well be implemented by the Department of Defense relatively simply and swiftly. All the more reason to expedite the actual implementation and repeal of the law. The further along it gets by January 2013, the more difficult and problematic it will be to walk back.
This was my sadness about the compromise at the time. I knew it left the door open for our community to have to continue fighting in 2012, 2013, etc. It is, indeed, legally possible for DADT repeal to become yet another ping-pong victory like marriage equality in California, New Hampshire and LGBT employment discrimination protection in Virginia, that Governor McDonnell swiftly rescinded his first few weeks in office.
The progress of LGBT rights can go backwards. Sadly, sometimes, we do.