Surrogates for
Sen. Barack Obama briefed reporters Tuesday on the
senator's support for repealing the military's
discriminatory policy, saying it is outmoded and
serves as a hindrance to recruiting the best and
brightest for the nation's Armed Services.
The Barack Obama
campaign held a conference call Wednesday aimed at
contrasting the senator's support for repeal of the
military’s “don’t ask,
don’t tell” policy with John McCain’s
belief in maintaining the ban against gays and
lesbians serving openly in the Armed Forces.
“John
McCain does not believe that our military personnel are as
professional as the 23 other NATO countries that allow their
military members to serve openly,” said Rep.
Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, who emerged as a
fervent straight ally for repealing the ban in July at the
first congressional hearings held on the policy since 1993.
“As many of you know, they did adopt a platform
-- John McCain and Sarah Palin -- that emphasized the
incompatibility of homosexuality within the military
service.”
The GOP platform
asserts, “To protect our servicemen and women and
ensure that America’s Armed Forces remain the
best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those
values, the benefits of traditional military culture,
and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military
service.”
The Democratic
platform, by contrast, calls for an end to the policy in
the name of military preparedness: “We support the
repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t
tell’ and the implementation of policies to allow
qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of
sexual orientation.”
Without calling
the 72-year-old McCain by name, retired Lt. General
Claudia Kennedy noted a generational difference in
perspective on being gay. “We're in the
generation of soldiers who don't think this is nearly
as important as some of the people who are from a much older
generation,” the 60-year-old Kennedy said of
the group of Obama surrogates on the conference call.
Kennedy, the
first woman to reach the rank of a three-star general, added
that Sen. Joseph Lieberman -- a strong McCain supporter --
and the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, retired
General John Shalikashvili, have both said the
“outmoded” policy should be changed.
“There’s just no question in my mind that we
ought to look at the entire talent pool,” she
said, in relation to recruitment. “We should not be
artificially limiting who we look at as a potential
soldier.”
Some reporters
raised questions about whether Obama’s support for
reinstating the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)
programs on college campuses nationwide -- some
colleges expelled ROTC programs during the tumult of
the Vietnam War -- was in conflict with his commitment
to ending “don’t ask, don’t
tell.” Many campuses continue to ban military
recruitment of any kind based on the military’s
discriminatory policy against gays.
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Kerry Eleveld is political editor of The Advocate.