The Pop Star and the Politician

For those of you who know me, I don’t listen to pop music, hip hop/R&B, or anything really mainstream for that matter; I prefer classical music and classic rock, with some very obscure sub-genres thrown in there and whatnot.  Therefore, I’m not sure what’s more surprising: me discussing Lady Gaga, or the fact that she actually made the (serious) headlines for an exchange she happened to have with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Twitter this week.

Apparently, the senior Senator from Nevada and the world-famous singer had a Twitter conversation about the effort to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy barring gays and lesbians from serving in the military, unless they keep their sexual orientation a secret.  According to Mediaite, after Lady Gaga tweeted her followers to “Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Call Harry Reid to Schedule Senate Vote”, Senator Reid responded, announcing that there would, indeed, be a Senate vote on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell next week.  Mediaite then goes on to speculate whether this is Senator Reid’s attempt to portray himself as in tune with my generation in an election year, but I think that while there might be something to that, it’s not the only reason for the exchange.

Having spoken to a few of my friends who are more in tune with pop culture, it seems Lady Gaga is a fairly vocal advocate on LGBT issues.  The beauty of Twitter, of course, is that anyone can talk to a given celebrity or important public figure, and anything can happen to strike a chord and enter the cultural zeitgeist at any given time.  That seems to have happened to Lady Gaga’s exchange with the Majority Leader; in the days since, other Senators have been in contact with Lady Gaga and the issue seems to be gaining steam ahead of the vote.

The Downfall of DADT?

Apparently, she released a video specifically targeted at influencing select Republican Senators, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).  From what I’ve found so far, there seems to have been no reaction from this group, except a dismissive response from Senator McCain, which has apparently started a bit of a war of words between the two.  According to Yahoo News, on reading McCain’s reply saying in effect that he was going to filibuster the larger Defense bill that the repeal is a part of, she did exactly what any upstanding citizen should do in a case such as this: encourage fellow citizens to write their Senators.  Of course, she has around 6.5 million people following her on Twitter, so she’s probably a lot more effective than you or I, but that’s beside the point.

Apparently, the outreach has been effective; according to Lady Gaga’s Twitter feed, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Deomcrats from New York, and coincidentally both up for re-election this year, reached out to the cultural sensation earlier on Friday.  I know this will be one vote that I’ll be watching, but DADT isn’t only under attack from Congress.

According to the New York Times, the Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP’s LGBT rights subgroup, successfully challenged DADT in Federal court.  No surprises in that ruling; DADT violates freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment, and violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is amont the worst of homophobic policies; after all, it encourages lying in our nation’s armed forces, and as a result harms the level of trust that our soldiers should have for each other in the field.  Further, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell actually hurts readiness and the military as a whole due to the discharge of soldiers with important skills and the damage the policy does to the military’s efforts in recruitment.

That, according to NPR, is the basis of the ruling in Federal court, and now that same group is seeking an injunction in the matter.  DADT repeal is attached to the Defense spending bill, which in theory gives it a greater likelihood of passage since Senators would be casting a vote against the entire spending bill if they were to want to vote down DADT.  Of course, the flip side of that is that it makes the whole blasted thing subject to the filibusters promised by Senator McCain.  Thus, the court action is a necessary piece; the law may still be on the books for another few years, but if the discharges stop, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

A Dangerous Precedent

Given that much of the pressure to repeal DADT coming from within the government has been from President Obama, you might wonder why government lawyers keeps defending the policy in court.  As much as I’d like for the government to not defend it and just come to a settlement on it, think of the precedent that would set.  A move like that, though it would be the right thing to do, would be essentially politicizing the judiciary.  Sure, they may be in tune with the politics of the day already, but the courts have to be impartial; the law is the law, after all, and we are a nation founded on the rule of law.

If the Obama Administration were to set the precedent of not defending an existing law, no matter whether it is wrong or right, successive Administrations could in theory get away with enforcing their vision on America by allowing challenges to things they didn’t support to succeed.  Want to abolish Social Security?  Do it through the court.  Want to repeal the birthright citizenship clause?  Do it through the court.  Want to repeal the Patriot Act?  The Bush tax cuts?  You get my drift.  Those would very likely be the scenario if such a precedent were established.  Taken to the extreme, under such a philosophy Congress would become effectively irrelevant; they could still pass laws and do what they normally do, but if the Administration doesn’t like them, they’re gone at the first court challenge.  And if that happens, America will really be in trouble.

The The Pop Star and the Politician by The New Age of Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Tags: Chuck Schumer, DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, GOP, Harry Reid, John McCain, Kirsten Gillibrand, Lady Gaga, Log Cabin Republicans, Party leaders of the United States Senate, Politics, President Obama, Twitter