I didn't need another reason to support Obama for president, but now I have one. I am so proud to have him as my senator!

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The Frontlines: Obama Endorses MREA

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has said that as commander-in-chief he will press Congress to pass The Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a bill to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

All this week, candidates responded to a question from the Human Rights Campaign about how, as president, they would work to repeal the law. Senator Obama said, in part, that "As president, I will work with Congress and place the weight of my administration behind enactment of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which will make nondiscrimination the official policy of the U.S. military. I will task the Defense Department and the senior command structure in every branch of the armed forces with developing an action plan for the implementation of a full repeal of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.' And I will direct my Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to develop procedures for taking re-accession requests from those qualified service members who were separated from the armed forces under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and still want to serve their country."

One of the things that slays me is how the Republican candidates, left and right, love to repeat the dodge of “we shouldn’t change the policy in the middle of a war”.
(And considering how the Republicans seem to continually be extending the next nation they want to invade and the war in terror proclaimed to be a war that may have NO end, it's almost a "catch-22" situation that will never end if the Republicans have their way...)

The Republican candidate argument is extreme horse-doodie because what the heck does the military ACTUALLY DO with their homosexual exclusion policy during war-time?
They RELAX ENFORCEMENT of the policy until after the war.

This fact alone demonstrates how much utter horse-kaka the homosexual exclusion policy is. War-time would be the time that you need the most “unit cohesion”.
(Which is typically their excuse for why they can’t allow gays in the military, ironically identical to the excuses they used for why they couldn’t allow blacks in the military.)

Military after military in other modern countries incorporate gays into the military with no rule excluding them. The U.S. government has performed research TWICE coming to the conclusion that gays can be allowed to serve in the military without significant problem. The military exclusion policy costs MILLIONS in tax-payers dollars, all for the purpose of discrimination with no observable gain.
And even the military ignores the rule when convenient.
What more needs to be said?