I hope DADT will go down in 2010

President Obama made a commitment to repealing DADT in his State of the Union address: "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It's the right thing to do."

CNN reports DoD leaders SecDef Gates and ADM Mullen will discuss proposals with Congress next week to end or at least change the implementation of DADT. Support for ending DADT, coupled with the majority party seeking a progressive 'score', is strong enough that I believe a set of palatable military-vetted ideas should be the tipping point to push it through Congress.

I support a thoughtful change of the policy that is sensitive to any effect on soldiers doing very difficult, important things right now, but I believe the transition from DADT will be relatively smooth. I hope the change is sooner, ie, within a year as the President stated, rather than later. DADT is bad policy that has harmed honorable gay soldiers who have served, are serving, and will serve, DADT is counter to my social and cultural concept of the American military of which I'm a proud veteran, and ending DADT is a key step toward returning ROTC to Columbia University.

Eric