Senate votes to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

In a landmark vote that for some echoed the nation’s greatest civil rights struggles, the Senate on Saturday moved resolutely to abolish the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which for 17 years has forced gay and lesbian members of the armed forces to keep their sexual orientation hidden.

The 65-31 vote, which came after a charged and sometimes vitriolic debate, was surprisingly bipartisan. Eight Republicans joined Democrats in voting to repeal the Clinton-era policy.

“It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed,” President Obama said Saturday. “It is time to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country openly.”

“Our government has sent a powerful message that discrimination, on any level, should not be tolerated,” said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, which fought for years against the ban.

Some conservatives, on the other hand, were deeply unhappy. “The American military exists for only one purpose — to fight and win wars. Yet it has now been hijacked and turned into a tool for imposing on the country a radical social agenda,” said Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council.

The drive toward repeal represented a significant — and somewhat unforeseen — political victory for Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have struggled to advance their agenda during the final weeks of Congress. Days earlier, it had appeared that partisan squabbling would scuttle the repeal effort as it did the Dream Act, a priority of immigration reform advocates that failed to overcome a Senate filibuster Saturday.

But once the House detached the repeal provision from a Pentagon spending bill and passed a new version of the legislation earlier in the week, gay rights advocates felt that the timing, as well as history, was finally on their side.

Momentum had begun to build anew after testimony earlier in the month by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, both of whom again called for an end to the discriminatory policy, citing a Pentagon study that said the change would cause little disruption within the ranks of the military.

More than 14,000 members of the armed forces have been discharged since the policy’s inception in 1993.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed to Mullen as a key figure in the breakthrough. Earlier this year, Mullen told lawmakers, “We have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

“It was a matter of integrity,” Levin said. “We cannot tell people they cannot be themselves.”

Gates and Mullen also warned that if Congress failed to act, the matter could be settled by the federal courts.

But Gates also cautioned Saturday that although Obama is expected to sign the measure next week, repeal will not happen immediately. Under the legislation, the policy may be altered only once new guidelines are put in place that are “consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention,” he said.

For that reason, repeal advocates such as Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, sounded a bit wary, even as a long-fought battle appeared all but over. Sarvis called on Gates and the Pentagon to immediately suspend all investigations and discharges of gay and lesbian personnel.

Much of the drama in the Senate occurred early Saturday morning and centered on whether Republicans would be able to filibuster the bill to prevent it from reaching the floor.

GOP senators, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, accused Democrats of pushing the repeal through in the last days of a lame-duck Congress in defiance, McCain said, of the results of November’s election, which made Republicans ascendant in the House and increased their numbers in the Senate.

“We are jamming — or trying to jam — major issues through the Senate of the United States because [Democrats] know they can’t get it done beginning next January,” McCain said.

He and other Republicans seized upon the testimony of Marine Corps Commandant James F. Amos, who earlier this month warned that a repeal of the policy could be a “distraction” to Marines and put them in harm’s way.

“Today is a sad day,” McCain said.

Ironically, McCain’s close ally during the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), spearheaded the push for repeal, countering McCain’s claims on the Senate floor.

“Allowing people to serve our military regardless of sexual orientation is not a liberal or conservative idea, not a Republican or Democratic idea,” said Lieberman, who walked 90 minutes from his home in Washington to the Capitol to avoid driving in observance of the Jewish Sabbath. “It is an American idea consistent with American values.”

Of McCain, he said, “We’ve been through a lot together, so I don’t think this will leave any scars. I think we leave this fight knowing that I was right and he was wrong. It’s as simple as that.”

In the end, 63 senators, including six Republicans, voted to cut off debate. Hours later, two more members of the GOP switched sides and supported the repeal bill, including Sen. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, who still sounded as if he believed it was the wrong thing to do.

“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops employed in combat areas today that we haven’t put any thought into how we implement this within the ranks of our military. I think it’s irresponsible,” Burr said after the vote. “But we’ll dump it in Secretary Gates’ lap now because he’s the one in control of the timeline, and we’ll find out if politics trumps good execution.”

In addition to Burr, the other Republicans voting to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” were Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, George V. Voinovich of Ohio and John Ensign of Nevada.

All Democrats voted to repeal the policy, except Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who was not present.

Shortly before the climactic final vote, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D- San Francisco) recalled the activists who had fought against the policy for years.

“We have come a long way because people put their fear aside and they came forward and they told their stories. They took the light and they focused it on the truth. We’ve come a long way because of their families who loved them and have spoken out,” Boxer said. “This is America at its best, when we open our arms to equality, freedom and justice.”

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

joliphant@latimes.com