The prospect of a vote moving Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell one step closer to being repealed in the Senate tonight is sending the vehemently anti-repeal Family Research Council into a bit of a tizzy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to call for a cloture vote on the defense spending bill that includes a repeal of the military’s ban on openly gay service — possibly sometime this evening — and the FRC is firing up its phone banks in response.
“Call your Senators today,” an “Action Alert” email sent this afternoon by the FRC reads, “and tell them to stop using the military to impose this Administration’s radical anti-life/pro-homosexual agenda.”
The FRC, a leader in conservative social politics, has led some of the most ardent opposition to repealing DADT. The action alert email tonight could signal that the group is worried that the end of the fight is near — and that it’s not ending the way they hoped.
The group’s continued support for a ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen — as well as other anti-gay rights rhetoric coming from the group — recently earned the FRC a place on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups.
Tonight’s FRC alert warns that repeal of DADT would be an end “the military’s longstanding prohibition of homosexual conduct in the ranks,” and warns that other sections of the defense spending bill “would turn U.S. military medical facilities here and around the globe into facilities that perform abortion” (that’s another no-no for the FRC.)
The group says that the only way to stop the “pro-homosexual agenda” is for Senators to vote against cloture. The FRC could be right, as far as it goes — most say that unless the DADT repeal moves toward a vote soon, debate over repeal could be kicked over to the next Congress where it’s far less likely to find quarter. So far only, three Republican Senators — Scott Brown (MA), Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) — have announced they support repeal. And even then, there are stipulations attached to their support.
FRC President Tony Perkins writes in the Action Alert that he hopes Republicans can stop the growing chorus for repeal dead in its tracks tonight.
“Senator Reid has arranged it that pro-family Senators do not have an opportunity to offer any of their own amendments to counter his political abuse of our military,” Perkins wrote in the alert. “This means the only way to stop this monstrosity is to vote against proceeding to the bill.”
