John McCain to Pentagon: "Yo Mama!"

“We send these young people into combat; we think they’re mature enough to fight and die. I think they’re mature enough to make a judgment on who they want to serve with and the impact on their battle effectiveness.” 

John McCain at yesterday’s hearing on DADT.

Our young military members’ fathers and grand fathers weren’t too keen on a lot of people that weren’t like them.  Give women the vote?  Women, other than teachers and nurses, in the workforce?  Black people serving with white people in the military?  Integrated Schools? All recipes for disaster!

John McCain is ‘agin gays; but, he knows he can’t come out and say that.  So he wants the military to study the issue.  They do it and conclude that the world won’t end if gays are soldiers.  So, he says, the study is flawed, it didn’t address all of the issues, let’s listen more to what our brave young warriors have to say.

There is no perfect time to change the rules.  All of society will never buy into any given social change.  There are misogynists and racists in your neighborhood and they’ll still be around for decades, perhaps centuries to come, living next door to gay bashers.

But we’re making progress.  The fearful haters can’t just spew their bile, they have to couch their “arguments” in other terms.  You don’t hear the phases barefoot and pregnant, shiftless colored folk and the like in polite society much anymore.  The emotions are still there in some; but, they’ve been driven underground.  Sen. McCain is finding himself behind the curve and he’s none too happy.  Here’s to his continuing unhappiness.