Perhaps they can be kicked out for being bigots

The saga of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the military ban on gays serving openly, continues. The military decided that part of complying with the district court order meant that they had to allow openly gay recruits to enlist. Dan Choi, the soldier who chained himself to the White House fence in protest of DADT and was later discharged, dashed to the nearest recruiting station. He found he is now too old to rejoin the Marines, so he enlisted in the Army. On his enlistment form he clearly said I'm gay and I'll be open about it.

Valerie Jarrett repeated the Obama Admin line about how the ban must be repealed -- through Congress -- and concluded that those who disagreed with the prez. simply didn't understand the process. Dan Choi led the rebuttal.

The 9th Circuit Court sided with the Justice Department and issued a stay of implementation. In the meantime the Defense Department made it harder to discharge gays if they go back to following the policy. What about all those enormous consequences of having open gays in the military? Many see that as a half-hearted (half-baked?) attempt by the prez. to repair things with gays.

Some of the response from mainstream media is: Of course we have to take things slowly, the military is full of good-ole-boys from rural/conservative areas and we have to handle them carefully or our military will be in a mess. The bigots are still stuck on the fear of being groped in the shower. Which means we have a military so bigoted that such bigotry takes precedence over following orders (harassment of fellow soldiers is already punishable -- though many female soldiers will tell you how well that is enforced). And we have military commanders who are impotent to enforce discipline. That's the image they want to project at home and around the world? Maybe DADT should be reworded to apply to bigots -- you may be a bigot and join the military as long as you are quiet about it. But as soon as someone finds out you're a bigot, you're out of there.

Through all this we're still puzzling out what's going on inside Obama's head. What is his strategy and the logic behind it? Only he and his tight-lipped advisors know. Some have wondered if Obama is demanding repeal come through Congress because of the firestorm from Fundies if he simply obeys the court (all that activist judge and the sanctity of the vote nonsense). Liberals were complaining that Bush pulled in too much power and now they are asking Obama to do the same thing -- except Obama has the cover of that district court.

Obama's options:

* Declare DADT unconstitutional (which the court did for him) and thus he won't follow it. But Obama has very carefully described DADT as "wrong" but not "unconstitutional"
-- in spite of Valerie Jarrett's claims.

* Leave the law in place and rewrite rules (which he has control over) to make sure it is infrequently enforced. He already does that for many laws (as did Bush). In this case only Congress and the military would have standing to object to Obama's rules.

* Obama could let gays serve while waiting for Congress to act.

Perhaps Obama simply wants to stay out of the mess, leaving it up to the military and Congress. Too late. He's making it worse.