Last Saturday, social conservatives received a wake-up call when Democrats once again imposed their left-wing San Francisco values on America by voting to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (DADT) in a lame-duck Senate session. This delivered a tipping-point blow to our armed services and will hurt our military’s ability to defend the country.
Why do Democrats want to repeal DADT, considering that it has been in effect since 1993 and has worked well? This is not about what is good for the country or the military; it is about jamming the Democrats’ left-wing, radical social agenda down the throats of the American people. This is a wake-up call for social conservatives that we are in a culture war that the left will not give up on despite suffering historic losses in the November midterms.
Although social conservatives lost the battle on DADT, the culture war and the fight on this have just begun. The repeal of DADT is mobilizing a large group of previously inactive social conservatives, just as the health care fight, TARP, the stimulus and other fiscal issues mobilized fiscal conservatives. Going forward, DADT will be the rallying cry for social conservatives, and the issue will not fade away. Social conservatives know that the military is the last line of defense in the culture war and if it falls, so does the rest of the country.
Social conservatives are already fighting back. Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall is in the process of drafting a bill for Virginia’s 2011 legislative session that would ban gays from serving in the Virginia National Guard. It is only a matter of time before social conservatives begin to fight back against DADT’s repeal at the federal level as well. Just as abortion has not gone away, DADT will not go away and will be a rallying cry as social conservatives draw the line in the sand and finally say enough is enough.
Darin Selnick is an independent consultant and former director of Center for Faith Based and Community Initiatives within the Department of Veterans Affairs.