The United States Senate today voted to allow the president and the military to lift the bigoted "don't ask, don't tell" policy that for the past 17 years has required gay members of the military to lie about who they are.
Republicans in the U.S. Senate today also blocked a vote on the DREAM act, a measure that would have allowed young people who grew up in America and not anywhere else to become legally recognized as Americans provided they graduate from college and/or serve in the military.
The former vote is long overdue, but still a big step toward justice and equality under the law.
The latter refusal to even hold a vote is inexcusable and inexplicable apart from the nastiest and least noble of motives.
At the end of the day, what this means is that if you want to serve your country and put your life on the line to defend the freedoms enjoyed by Republican U.S. senators, those senators will begrudgingly and belatedly allow you to do so if you are gay or lesbian. But if you want to serve your country and put your life on the line to defend the freedoms enjoyed by Republican U.S. senators and you're also brown-skinned and weren't born here, then most of those senators would sooner see you deported than to allow you to express your patriotism for a nation they don't want to acknowledge you're a part of.
So hooray for the vote on the repeal of DADT. And shame on those 45 awful, awful people who refused to even allow a vote on the DREAM act.
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