Obama to Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

The Barack Obama campaign held a conference call Wednesday aimed at contrasting the senator's support for repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with John McCain’s belief in maintaining the ban against gays and lesbians serving openly in the Armed Forces.
“John McCain does not believe that our military personnel are as professional as the 23 other NATO countries that allow their military members to serve openly,” said Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, who emerged as a fervent straight ally for repealing the ban in July at the first congressional hearings held on the policy since 1993. “As many of you know, they did adopt a platform -- John McCain and Sarah Palin -- that emphasized the incompatibility of homosexuality within the military service.”
The GOP platform asserts, “To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America’s Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.”
The Democratic platform, by contrast, calls for an end to the policy in the name of military preparedness: “We support the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and the implementation of policies to allow qualified men and women to serve openly regardless of sexual orientation.”