Knights Out

What’s the holdup on repealing DADT? Daily Beast contributor Jason Bellini reveals that gay leaders may be to blame.

Watch at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-04/the-surprising…

Michelangelo Signorile interviews Joe Solmonese of HRC which denies Bellini’s report. Listen at: http://www.signorile.com/2009/06/joe-solmonese-interview-discusses-obama…

Signorile also says “While Bellini had unnamed sources, I, however, have a named source saying exactly what Bellini reports, someone I interviewed several weeks ago on the show: Aaron Belkin of the Palm Center, the research institute that focuses on the military and sexuality, located at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Belkin writes often for The Huffington Post and interacts with members of Congress. (I have including a few-minute clip from that interview here as well). I didn’t see or know about the Bellini piece when I interviewed Joe (it either had just posted or wasn’t up yet), but I did ask him about what Belkin claimed. Belkin was relatively certain in what he told me:

AB: “...Our major national gay rights organizations—it would be one thing to say nothing, but there is pro-active lobbying on the hill for Congress not to consider [the “don’t ask, don’t tell”] issue. And so the community has been appalling on this issue.

MS: Have you seen any response from any of those groups, and I guess we’re talking about the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, other Washington groups?

AB:...We’ve heard from so many offices that not only are they not doing anything but they’re pro-actively lobbying against consideration of the issue. I feel very confident in saying that.

NGLTF doesn’t lobby on the hill, so the reference was clearly about HRC. Joe Solmonese denied this claim when I quoted it, though for accuracy’s sake I should state that I asked him specifically about lobbying the White House on the issue and not Congress.”