Don't Tell Dowd Don't Ask Works

I admit it: I've had a huge crush on New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for a long time. There are few writers who can combine wit, eloquence and relevance in quite the way Maureen does. And today, I love her more than ever.

In this morning's Times, Dowd takes on the politicos who continue to defend "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and she does it as only she can:

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, as the gloriously gay Oscar Wilde said. And gays are the sacrifice that hypocritical Republican candidates offer to placate 'values' voters -- even though some candidates are not so finicky about morals regarding their own affairs and divorces.

They may coo over the photo of Dick Cheney, whose re-election campaign demonized gays, proudly smiling with his new grandson, the first baby of his lesbian daughter, Mary. But they'll hold the line, by jiminy, against gay Americans who are willing to die or be horribly disfigured in the cursed Bush/Cheney war in Iraq.

Peter Pace, whose job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff became a casualty of Iraq on Friday, asserted in March that homosexual acts 'are immoral.' Yet in May, he wrote a letter to the judge in the Scooter Libby case, pleading for leniency for the Cheney aide. Scooter always looked for 'the right way to proceed -- both legally and morally,' Pace wrote of the man who lied to a grand jury about the outing of a spy, after he pumped up the fake case for the war that has claimed the lives of 3,500 young men and women serving under the general."

The 65,000 lesbian and gay troops silenced by "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" found a powerful new voice to speak up for them today. And Dowd showed us how she earned her Pulitzer, and what the tradition of excellent op-ed writing is all about.

You can read Raw Story's coverage of her column here, and Times Select subscribers can read her full write-up online here.

- Steve Ralls