Obama Fights To Preserve Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Before Supreme Court

President Barack Obama continued his effort to preserve the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in a filing before the United States Supreme Court. A trial court had imposed an injunction to halt the discriminatory policy. The Administration could have allowed the injunction to stand pending an appeal but succeeded in getting the order reversed. Now, it is defending its intention to continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department had secured an order from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco to allow it to continue to discharge service members solely because they are known to be gay or lesbian. It is also seeking to reverse a decision finding that such discrimination violates the Constitution. The Administration had the discretion not to appeal or to allow the injunction to stand. Instead it is fighting for the right to discriminate and has argued for an extreme view of military discretion in the abuse of gays and lesbians — including opposing the very right of individual service members to show that they were not personally a threat to good order and discipline. The Obama Administration has argued that the court should just accept that any and all openly gay and lesbian service members are a threat to good order and discipline — and thus a threat to our overall national security . . . And they wonder why Obama and Bush are now virtually even in the polls.

Source: MSNBC