Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: No Golden Silence Here

New York Times columnist Frank Rich must not read The Moderate Voice.

In a column today in the Times, discussing the reaction to Adm. Mullen’s testimony on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Rich says:

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

Rich contends that, perhaps with the exception of John McCain—“the crazy man in Washington’s attic”— “[fulminating] against the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’”:

Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés.

Others mentioned by Rich as having problems with the repeal of DADT are Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, and the Family Research Council, “which issued an inevitable ‘action alert’ demanding a stop to ‘the sexualization of our military.’”

Rich then asks the question, “The occasional outliers notwithstanding, why did such a hush greet Mullen on Capitol Hill?”

Rich goes on to provide some possible answers, some put forward in my recent post on this issue:

• “[T]he simple fact that a large majority of voters — between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll — now share [Mullen’s] point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a ‘lifestyle’ but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, ‘the right thing to do.’”

• The fact that many Americans in all walks of life share the views and feelings expressed in Mullen’s “heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony,” on accepting the reality, humanity and equal rights of gays: “As more gay people have come out…so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.”

• The “potent political subtext” that, in contrast to when Karl Rove and George W. Bush “ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people, there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them.” And, now that such an explicit anti-gay animus is “an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage.”

Rich concludes with comments similar to those made by most TMV contributors and readers in their posts and comments, respectively:

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

And this brings me back to my initial comment that Rich must not be reading The Moderate Voice. For, at TMV, there has been a very lively discussion on this issue and some very frank reactions. Some so “frank” that they had to be “moderated” in order to remain within the common sense, civil “Comments Standards” at TMV.

Witness the fact that even a couple of Cagle cartoons posted at TMV on this issue have generated a significant number of comments. This cartoon (Gays in the Military) has drawn 33 comments thus far, and this one (Boot Camp for Homophobes), 27 comments.

No “golden silence” at TMV.