What have conservatives said about the homosexualization of the military? (Answer: very little, except to accept it.)

I said last week that I wanted to look up mainstream conservatives’ responses to the overthrow of the prohibition of homosexuality in U.S. armed services, in order to check out my impression that they had largely surrendered to it, but I haven’t gotten around to doing so. If anyone has seen such articles, please send me the link or links. Thank you.

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Kathlene M. has done some digging and found support for lifting the homosexual ban all over the conservative movement, ranging from the American Conservative Union and CPAC to Glenn Beck to Commentary to the “conservative” senator-elect Patrick Toomey to the Senate GOP caucus which did not put up a fight. Seventeen years after the conservative movement and congressional Republicans fought Clinton tooth and nail on homosexuals in the military and beat him, the conservative movement and the GOP lay down and died without a fight.

Kathlene M. writes:

I have been researching conservatives’ response to the repeal of the misnamed “DADT” law. Back in July, supposed Catholic Bill O’Reilly said that Obama should just repeal DADT. Social-libertarian Glenn Beck has agreed with O’Reilly about the non-significance of “gay-rights” issues. I was in shock a few weeks ago when I saw Glenn Beck on Bill O’Reilly’s show claiming that gay rights issues were not significant to him personally and therefore, by implication, they had no impact on conservative issues. [LA replies: While I’m not surprised by this news, I would just add that O’Reilly is not a conservative and has never called himself one.]

Here’s a July 2010 interview (linked via gay webzine The Advocate) with Bill O’Reilly on the Jay Leno show in which he confirms that he agrees with repealing “DADT”:

Bill O’Reilly: Stop DADT

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly thinks President Barack Obama should just sign an executive order to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell.”

“It’s just not fair, they should stop this nonsense,” he said.

He and Tonight Show host Jay Leno were speaking about Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, who after months of speaking out, was discharged from the Army National Guard last week.

Video of the exchange is below …

Kathlene also sent this quote from an article (no link):

“CPAC [is] splintering due to [the] basic stance that “moral opposition to homosexuality is no longer welcome in the conservative movement … [ACU (the American Conservative Union) has] gone libertarian, that’s their focus,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm. “Libertarianism is right on the economy, often wrong on national defense, and doesn’t care about social conservatism. Libertarians only respect one leg of the Reagan revolution, and you can’t stand for long on one leg.” [LA replies: I’m not surrprised. David Keene’s American Conservative Union has always been soft, always lacking in principles and ready to move to the “center,” i.e., the left.]

Kathlene sends this article from WND about split between social conservatives and CPAC over the homosexual issue:

Biggest conservative names bidding goodbye to CPAC
Participation of homosexuals, financial mismanagement cited
Posted: December 27, 2010 9:40 pm Eastern
By Brian Fitzpatrick © 2010 WorldNetDaily

Two of the nation’s premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited.

“We’ve been very involved in CPAC for over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions. However, we will no longer be involved with CPAC because of the organization’s financial mismanagement and movement away from conservative principles,” said Tom McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action.

“CWA has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud,” CWA President Penny Nance told WND.

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud.

The American Conservative Union, longtime organizers of CPAC, disclosed just before Christmas that GOProud would be considered a “participating organization,” the second highest level of participation. As a “participating organization,” GOProud has a voice in planning the conference.

The decision followed two hotly contested CPAC board votes over GOProud. The first vote ended in a tie. The outcome of the second vote has not been officially disclosed, but a source at ACU leaked the decision favoring GOProud to the media.

ACU is also currently struggling through an embezzlement scandal, in which the ex-wife of ACU Chairman David Keene is suspected of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the organization. Diana Carr, ACU’s former bookkeeper, was fired in January 2010.

Nobody from ACU was available to comment, as the organization’s offices are closed for the holiday season.

“Excellent. It is gratifying to see FRC and CWA respond appropriately to CPAC’s moral sellout of allowing GOProud as a sponsor,” said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, the nation’s best-known organization dedicated exclusively to opposing the homosexual political agenda.

“By bringing in GOProud, CPAC was effectively saying moral opposition to homosexuality is no longer welcome in the conservative movement,” said LaBarbera. “Would CPAC bring in an organization specifically devoted to promoting abortion and pretend it’s conservative?” LaBarbera has formerly participated in CPAC, but said he may protest the conference this year.

“Shame on CPAC for defending the absurd proposition that one can be ‘conservative’ while embracing moral surrender—in this case the idea espoused by GOProud of the government granting ‘rights’ and benefits based on sinful sexual conduct long regarded as anathema to biblical and Judeo-Christian values,” LaBarbera added.

“[ACU has] gone libertarian, that’s their focus,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm. “Libertarianism is right on the economy, often wrong on national defense, and doesn’t care about social conservatism. Libertarians only respect one leg of the Reagan revolution, and you can’t stand for long on one leg.”

“[GOProud is] why Liberty Counsel and Liberty University dropped out of CPAC,” Staver told WND. “Last year Liberty University was a CPAC sponsor, and we worked on a committee selecting speakers. We were not informed that GOProud was a consponsor. They were brought in at the eleventh hour, and we learned about it in a homosexual blog.”

Liberty Counsel responded by sending a protest letter to the ACU.

“We said GOProud is not a conservative organization,” said Staver. “They are undermining the military” by promoting open homosexuality, and “undermining marriage” by opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, which preserves the traditional definition of marriage by limiting it to one man and one woman.

“Anything that undermines marriage also undermines our freedom and economy,” said Staver. “It is contrary to our fundamental values to have as a cosponsor an organization that promotes same-sex marriage.”

“GOProud doesn’t fit in any of the areas of conservatism within CPAC,” Staver continued. “We asked CPAC to disassociate themselves from GOProud, but they refused to.

“The only way we would return to CPAC now is if CPAC openly disassociated itself from GOProud and carried on a pattern of activity that convinces us they are truly broad-based conservatives.”

Both FRC and Liberty Counsel said they would direct their efforts to rival conferences that respect moral conservatism.

“This year we will not be cosponsors or exhibit at CPAC,” said Staver. “We are focusing on other events that are more conservative, like the Awakening 2011 conference at Liberty University this spring. For the next two years we will be cosponsoring the FRC Values Voters Summit. We’re going to refocus our resources on events that promote the three legs of Reagan conservatism, social, economic and national defense.”

“We will to work to ensure that the Values Voters Summit continues as the premier conservative gathering in Washington, D.C.,” FRC’s McClusky told WND.

Evan H. writes:

I was surprised to see that Ann Coulter is opposed to the homosexualization of the military and also opposed to women in the military.

LA replies:

Coulter’s column was published December 8, ten days before the repeal was passed. The passage of the repeal was not broadly expected, and came as a shock. The test is, did someone raise alarms against the repeal after it was passed, or go silent or even voice approval, as we’ve seen so many conservatives have, their message to the conservative base being, “it was time for this to happen, accept it.”

Max P. writes:

Pat Buchanan had a pretty good article entitled, “The Marines: Sacrificed for San Fransisco Values.”

Kathlene writes:

This article at Commentary mirrors the MSM’s meme that if a pro-life hard-core Catholic can support DADT repeal, then it must be okay! There is a libertarian theme in this as well.

Toomey Support for DADT Repeal Highlights a Conservative’s Independent Streak
Commentary Magazine, by Jonathan S. Tobin

The announcement that Pennsylvania Senator-elect Pat Toomey will support repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy about gays in the military may signal the end of this pointless rule. Those who haven’t followed Toomey’s career may be surprised that a hard-core conservative Republican and devout pro-life Catholic like Toomey would support a gay-rights measure. But Toomey’s libertarian instincts and abhorrence of big government have led him to the correct conclusion that seeking to ban a portion of the population that might usefully serve their country is a mistake. Nor is this a new position for Toomey.

And here is discussion at Lucianne.com.

Kathlene quotes an item from the lifesitenews.com:

Why did cultural conservatives lose the battle over “Don’t ask, don’t tell?”

Andrew Stiles at National Review Online observes in a Dec. 20 analysis of Burr’s “surprising vote” that the GOP caucus did not put up a vigorous defense of DADT. He quotes Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) admitting to NRO that repeal was “something people knew was going to happen.” Corker said he believes that if Democrats actually did have hearings, even more Republicans may have jumped on board….

For most Americans, homosexuality is a very abstract concept. A look into the details of the lifestyle and its health consequences confirms fairly quickly that homosexual behavior is physically, sexually, emotionally destructive. But Americans won’t learn that from watching sitcoms like “Will & Grace,” where two homosexuals were among the principle characters of the eight season NBC program.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 29, 2010 06:17 PM | Send