Nov 28, 2008  |  By: CHRIS JOHNSON  | COMMENTS     

A member of Barack Obama’s transition team is denying media reports that the president-elect has decided to delay efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until 2010.

An Obama transition team spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the decision on how to approach repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prohibits gays from serving openly in the military, would be made after more experts have joined the Obama administration.

“These decisions will not be made before the full national security team is in place,” the spokesperson said.

The Washington Times reported last week that two people who have advised Obama’s transition team said the president-elect “will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010” to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, which Congress passed in 1993.

Ending the ban was one of Obama’s campaign promises, although he said before his election that he would get the military on board with eliminating the law before taking action.

The Times article also quotes Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Service-members Legal Defense Network, saying that he thinks 2009 “is about foundation building and reaching consensus” and that he has held “informal discussions” with the Obama transition team on how the administration should proceed with the issue.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, also said repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may be further off and told the Blade earlier this month that “once Iraq is over,” Congress can eliminate the law.

But not everyone familiar with the issue has said that repealing the ban on open service would come later rather than sooner. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor of legislation that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” told CNN earlier this month that the administration would approve of such a bill next year.

“The key here is to get bills that pass the House and the Senate, that we can get to President-elect Obama to sign, and I think that we can do that, certainly, the first year of the administration,” she said.

Retired Army Col. Stewart Bornhoft, who is gay and a former commander in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said changing the law would require both “passion and preparation.”

“Clearly, the passion for change is there,” he said. “But it requires proper preparation for the [Defense Department] to declare that they can implement open service successfully.”

However, Bornhoft said repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be attainable in the next Congress.
“Whether that’s the first or second half of that period should be determined by the progress within the Pentagon’s thinking rather than an arbitrary calendar date,” he said.

Heather Sarver, a lesbian and former Russian linguist for the Air Force who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2003, said she understands “the need to build support” for legislation repealing the law, but said “everyone who cares about this issue should hold specific members of Congress accountable for their support of the bill.”

“What I fear is that Democrats have stated that they support repealing [the ban] in order to appease their gay constituents and to say they support gay issues without being in support of gay marriage,” she said. “If they are sincere, then they will schedule meetings with other members of Congress and garner their support for repeal.”

Sarver said if lawmakers do not work on building support, their opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the election will be seen as “nothing more than a political chess move.”

A Washington Post poll this summer found that 75 percent of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly, compared to 45 percent in 1993.

Meanwhile, AIDS activists praised Obama’s nomination of Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary, and predicted Daschle’s appointment would ramp up efforts in combating the HIV epidemic.

The activists pointed to how Daschle, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota and Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, voted in favor of bills aimed at confronting the spread of HIV through legislation that set up the D.C. needle exchange program.

Daschle also was a national co-chair of ONE Vote ’08, a non-partisan campaign that aimed to make global health issues more prominent in the 2008 election, including the international AIDS epidemic.

Carl Schmid, director of federal affairs for the AIDS Institute, noted that Daschle comes from a state that has a low incidence of HIV infections, but said the former senator “has always been very supportive of the issues” relating to HIV and gay rights.

Daschle would have an “extremely important” role in confronting the HIV epidemic, Schmid said, because the health and human services secretary oversees ...