Thursday, Senate Democrats announced that Majority Leader Harry Reid had scheduled a vote for Saturday on a bill that would repeal the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but some LGBT servicemembers point out that they will still face problems from some fellow soldiers even if a repeal goes forward.
On Thursday night, Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, predicting success for the repeal measure.
“We’ll get that [repeal] done on a Saturday. That is the plan,” Klobuchar said. “We have picked up votes because of the pressure over the time that we have pushed and pushed for this to get done, this repeal.”
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Democrats are eager to showcase the repeal as a major accomplishment for the party, after most liberal party members attacked the recent tax-cut deal between President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders. Still, life in uniform after a repeal would still present obstacles, according to one gay Minnesotan enlisted member of the Army National Guard. The soldier asked not to be identified in case Saturday’s repeal vote failed.
“Even if DADT were to disappear tomorrow,” the part-time soldier said on Thursday, “I’d still have to deal with harassment from people in my unit who thought it was gross.”
The much-discussed Pentagon survey of soldiers, sailors, and airmen found that 69 percent of respondents believed they had already served alongside an LGBT person. Of those, 92 percent said their unit’s readiness did not suffer as a result.
In a previous interview, the soldier described how commanding officers would permit anti-LGBT jokes to be made by other members of the unit, and how one supervisor made insinuations about his sexual orientation without proof. The soldier said that he felt lucky to be in a unit that would not normally be on the front lines of battle. Friends and acquaintances in armored and infantry units, which are all-male, described a unit culture that was much more sexualized, the soldier said, and derogatory towards women, lesbians, gays, and bisexuals.
While the soldier did eventually come out to some members of their unit, the soldier says they are unable to be open about their sexuality in Minnesota out of fear that a superior or a friend of a superior might find out. Even though a successful repeal vote in the Senate appears increasingly likely as conservative Democrats and centrist Republicans signal their support, the guardmember says his emotions have swung from anger and frustration to apprehension as this and previous repeal efforts gain momentum or stall.
“It’s horrible having your life in the hands of a bunch of lawyers; a bunch of rich, white, old men in Washington [D.C.],” the guardmember said on Thursday.