The news that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal is really going to happen creates one of those rare circumstances where pretty much everyone turns out to be in the right. It lends credence to those who were insisting on calm, that failure to act immediately on the issue didn’t mean it wasn’t going to get done. It speaks well to the strategy of getting the military on board, of using Gates as the SecDef to minimize the turmoil about it. Waiting a couple years more than might have been strictly necessary sucks, but they’ve also already canceled application of the law pending further review. And in the grand scheme of our creaking, slow-moving, 18th century government two years is actually relatively quick.
So all of that is true, I think. But it’s also the case that the activists were right on. For one thing, their refusal to take the administration at its word was a necessary element of making this happen. If people just blindly accepted the promise, it would have removed one of the major instigators of action. As Dan Savage notes:
Acts of civil disobedience made DADT “contentious.” GetEqual and Dan Choi and the netroots—not HRC—put the president under “intense pressure.” Their success on DADT—and it is a success, this is progress—provides us with a road map to passing ENDA and repealing DOMA and securing federal recognition of same-sex relationships. Until we to make breaking the promises made to the LGBT community during campaigns more politically costly for Democrats than fulfilling them ever could be. People have to be willing to get arrested, embarrass our “allies” in the Democratic party, and heckle the Fierce Advocate in Chief.
Over the last couple years I’ve gone back and forth a fair amount on the wisdom of moving quickly on DADT. In the moments where I was simply frustrated that such a stupid, bigoted policy was being allowed to stick around my major concern was that ‘political expediency’ was going to be a slow death from a thousand cuts and that the time was never going to quite be ‘right’ to move on it. That’s been proven incorrect. The original timetable got delayed a bit, sure, but it really does seem like they were simply building enough support to make this easy and certain – and were waiting for the major stuff (like health care) to get done.
Which is the reasonable sort of calculation for a presidential administration to make. And at the same time, it’s a reasonable sort of calculation for gay rights groups – or simply people in general – to want something quicker, more certain, more emphatic. And the interplay between these two elements is what makes politics work, I think.