The U.S. Senate's vote on Saturday to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on gays and lesbians in the military is a step forward for gay civil rights. But, not surprisingly, it came with no help from Tennessee. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker were both among the 31 Republicans who voted against the repeal. (No Democrats voted against it, and it passed 65-31.) Corker made news earlier in the week when he seemed to threaten to block the START nuclear arms treaty if the DADT vote went forward. He dropped that bluster, but on Saturday suggested the whole issue was some kind of political handout: "This is a political issue, an issue to accommodate a group of supporters of the other side of the aisle." Someone might suggest to the senator that that "group" tends to support the "other side" because the other side has made less of a habit of demonizing them and trying to pass state and federal constitutional amendments to strip them of basic civil rights.
Anyway, Corker and Alexander joined a coterie of Tennessee representatives who had voted against the same measure in the House earlier in the week. Knoxville Rep. Jimmy Duncan was a "No" vote, as were the rest of Tennessee's Republicans (except for Zach Wamp, who didn't vote). Among the state's soon-to-shrink Democratic delegation, Lincoln Davis and John Tanner voted against, while Jim Cooper, Steve Cohen, and Bart Gordon supported the repeal.
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