Uruguay Lifts Ban On Homosexuals Serving In Military, American Military Ban On Gays Remains In Place And Confusion Over Repeal Reigns

Quite quietly, last Friday, Uruguay announced via the country’s presidential web site, that President Tabare Vazquez and Defense Minister Jose Bayardi signed legislation lifting a ban on homosexuals joining the armed forces that was implanted in the nineteen-seventies. The President had said that Uruguay does not discriminate “against citizens for their political view or their sexual choice.”

An unnamed senior American military official Friday stated that the Pentagon needs more time before it can lift the ban on gays serving opening, adding that President Obama does want to commit to his campaign promise to repeal DADT, but that the issue itself is a divisive one, and given the military is active in both Afghanistan and Iraq, a fight over policy changes, said the anonymous source, would prove detrimental. All this comes, of course, after weeks of continued impatience with an Administration seen as flip flopping on an issue that is fundamentally silly. An advocate of note, my friend Ana Marie Cox, who this week has hammered home the confusion and lack of real effort to repeal ban, and tried, bravely, and often in vain, to get answers.

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