Pentagon considering whether gay troops need to be segregated 'separate but equal' style; secret gay meeting confirms 'there is no plan' on DADT

Bumped. This is important.

An important and disturbing update on the President's promise to repeal the military's anti-gay Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.

From an article just published in the NYT we learn that not only has the White House not decided if it's going to push for the repeal of DADT, but it also hasn't decided what specifically it is going to push for, if anything. For example, the NYT reports that the Pentagon is considering whether we need to segregate gay servicemembers, "separate but equal" style, to keep them out of the showers and barracks of straight troops. (In addition to being supremely offensive, it's also supremely idiotic, as gay and lesbian servicemembers are already sharing showers and barracks with straight troops, without incident, and have been since before the Revolution.)

Just as troubling, Joe and I have learned the details of a secret meeting that took place this week among a number of top gay rights groups. At the meeting, the groups decided not to move ahead with a full-blown campaign to push for the repeal of DADT until the White House decides what it wants to do, hopefully sometime in the next month or two. This not only confirmed that the White House has no plan on DADT, after we'd been told for over half a year that they had a plan, but it also confirms that our groups are not at the table with the White House coming up with the repeal policy. Rather, our gay rights groups are just as out of the loop as the rest of us - are being kept out of the loop by the Obama White House - as if this were a hostile Republican administration, and not a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate."

I've got a much lengthier story about this, including more details of the secret meeting, on AMERICAblog Gay.