Your Help Needed to Repeal DADT and Pass the DREAM Act
Next week, the U.S. Senate will vote on two crucial human rights measures – a repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” which bars openly same-gender-loving people from serving in the military, and enactment of the DREAM Act, which allows undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, and have been here for at least five years, to earn legal status if they pass background checks, attend college or serve in the military for at least two years.
Over the past year, you have urged your legislators to support these measures, and asked Congressional leadership to bring them to the floor. Because of your advocacy, the time for a debate and a vote has finally arrived.
Please click here to urge your senators to support both of these measures.
Both of these bills will be voted on as amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. For those of us who passionately advocate peace over war, consideration of these two priority measures in a bill dealing with the expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense is a bitter pill to swallow. Still, there is no denying that the tactic of using this spending bill as a means to pass progressive legislation has proven effective, most recently with the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
It appears that the only opportunity to move forward legislative priorities of the immigrant rights and LGBT civil rights movements in 2010 are through these two crucial votes next week. Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and passing the DREAM Act are moral imperatives that every legislator should support, regardless of how these measures come to the floor. Unfortunately, Republicans are threatening to filibuster to prevent these measures from becoming law.
We need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and we need your help to make this happen!
Click here email your U.S. senators in support of these two measures.
In the wise words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.”
In partnership and equality,
Dan Furmansky
Campaign Manager
Standing on the Side of Love
P.S. If you can, take an extra 2 minutes and call your U.S. Senators to let them know you support the Dream ACT and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Dial (202) 224-3121 and a switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate office you request.
Would a Senator be on the wrong side of love to vote agains either of these bills? You really out it to the greater UU blogosphere to seriously engage us here, rather than just delete comments you dislike.
i assume you mean “owe it to the greater UU blogosphere”
In my humble opinion, yes one can be on the wrongs side of both of these issues.
How? DADT is a bad policy- it has been used by members of the military as a way to get rid of people they dislike. People have been accused of being gay and discharged. To me that means people with political agendas can attack others and that is not standing on the side of love.
Also when people cannot be authentically themselves it is difficult. Imagine not being able to discuss your private life- at all…really, try to imagine what that is like. It is alienating and isolating- it asks people to keep secrets- to hide who they are- how can that be on the side of love? People should be able to talk about their families at work, or have a picture, or invite people over for a bbq or whatever… not being able to connect with others causes stress and paranoia.
Being out makes no difference in any other setting; there are other countries who allow gay people to serve openly and it is not a problem… its more of a problem to force them to keep it quiet…(see point one)
on the Dream Act- to stand with human beings who want to improve their lives, to care about their families and to have their basic human needs met is to stand on the side of love. to prevent someone from doing so is not. it is, to me, that simple. Either you believe in human rights or you don’t. we cannot selectively apply human rights to select groups.(though we try to do it all the time)
The Declaration of Human Rights puts forth the basic rights of all human beings, any policy or law that prevents those basic human rights from being achieved is not loving, not compassionate, not interested in evolution and growth.
Policies and laws that side on the side of fear cannot be justified…we are better than that. We can be better than that. All that is necessary is the will to move from fear to love. To put people before profits or things.
Shanti, Paul
I don’t think it should be acceptable to let people put their lives at risk to protect our freedoms but punish them if they practice one of those freedoms. And when I say practice, that could mean joining a conversation about family and then unintentionally revealing that they are not heterosexual in a single sentence, and then getting fired for it. Wow- what a way to thank these people for risking their lives for our freedoms. It’s crazy (and hypocritical) to me that anyone would think it is ok to let them risk their lives but not let them express who they are in the same way that all heterosexual military gets to.
We are supposed to be a free country that awards the same rights and civil liberties to every individual regardless of how different we all might be. By keeping DADT because it might make other soldiers uncomfortable we are perpetuating bias and bigotry, and the sooner we make a move to eliminate these discrepancies in the rights of different groups of American citizens, the sooner we will be able to create a truly “free” country.
It really doesn’t matter if you or someone else doesn’t think being homosexual is wrong or sick or whatever else you might think, and it doesn’t matter how uncomfortable it makes anyone- the point is that we all get to be who we are and still have the same rights. There are people of certain religions who make me very uncomfortable, so if I were in the military would it then be acceptable to make a law saying that you aren’t allowed to mention religion- you can’t pray in front of anyone you work with or discuss your beliefs or anything? To most people I think that would seem absolutely ridiculous, as it should, but it’s the EXACT same thing as the law we have in place now. I imagine that many people like to pray before they go into battle and while they are sitting in the middle of a foreign country not sure of what might come next, and just like that, many people like to talk about their families and I think they should be able to if the situation is reasonable for that kind of conversation, but we can’t say that heterosexual people can talk about their families but homosexual people cannot. It is ridiculously unfair, and in my interpretation of the Constitution (and what I think our founding fathers meant, regardless of how they individually would feel about homosexuality) it is completely Unconstitutional.
We should thank these soldiers for their service, not punish them for living their lives like every other citizen does.
sorry, I made a typo, I meant to say “if you or someone else thinks that being homosexual is wrong…”