Military Expert Says Add DADT Repeal to Defense Bill

Author and professor Nathaniel Frank is urging Congress to include an amendment in the upcoming Defense Authorization Budget that would allow openly gay and lesbian military personnel to serve.

Frank, writing in The Huffington Post Wednesday, said that leaving Congress to sort out the job as it did with the ongoing healthcare reform debacle could lead to disaster.

"President Obama has said he will work with Congress 'this year' to lift the ban," he wrote. "Sound familiar? In an interview in 2009, Obama finally acknowledged that this very same tactic with healthcare was a mistake: 'I, out of an effort to give Congress the ability to do their thing and not step on their toes, probably left too much ambiguity out there, which allowed the opponents of reform to come in and to fill up the airwaves with a lot of nonsense.'"

Because the 2011 defense spending bill is must-pass legislation, the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal would be an optimal amendment.

Frank also said that the bill would "turn the tables on the 'no-to-everything' Republicans," since it would require a supermajority for the bill to fail.