Partisanship on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Acting out of partisan petulance rather than principle, Senate Republicans — with help from two Democrats — on Tuesday scuttled the long-overdue repeal of the demeaning “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy requiring gays and lesbians to conceal their sexual orientation or face expulsion from the military. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should continue to press for repeal after the November elections.

Republicans gave two reasons for blocking debate on the defense authorization bill to which Reid had attached a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” One was that Reid was unwilling to allow them to offer additional amendments to the legislation. We don’t believe that was their primary concern. Reid should call their bluff by allowing a reasonable number of amendments when the Senate revisits the defense bill.

The other objection was that repeal would be premature because a Pentagon study about how to implement the change won’t be delivered to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates until Dec. 1. But under the bill, repeal wouldn’t take place until after a working group’s report has been completed and the president and secretary of Defense have certified that procedures for implementing it are “consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion and recruiting and retention of the armed forces.”

If neither of these reasons seems persuasive, it may be because there is a much simpler explanation for Republican obstructionism: a reluctance to allow Democrats to record additional legislative accomplishments before the midterm elections. One can only imagine how gay and lesbian service members view these political machinations over what they rightly regard as a matter of simple justice. Reid should do everything in his considerable power to bring repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to a vote that Republicans will find impossible to evade.