“For benefits such as [military family housing] the Department of Defense COULD legally direct the services to revise their regulations to extend coverage to service members’ same-sex partners. This could be accomplished in two ways: leave to the Service member the freedom to designate his or her ‘dependents’, ‘family members’, or similar term; or, revise these definitions to specifically mention a committed, same-sex relationship, and require some type of proof of that committed relationship. The latter is similar to the approach now being taken in Federal agencies for civilian employees.”.

I correctly predicted they would continue to ARBITRARILY deny this benefit because—their hollow, disingenuous, and outright false excuses aside—the obvious real reason is that they don’t want to deal with a possible uproar from Private and Mrs. Tater about the horror of the Tater tots having to live next door to ho-mo-sexuals! This is the same kind of cowardice and lack of leadership motivated by homophobia in their own top ranks and mostly IMAGINARY fears about the field that led them to drag out first even TALKING about repealing DADT and, then, DELAYING implementing it as long as possible. And, now a Pentagon shill drools it would be “violating the spirit” of the Defense of Marriage Act. WHO is the DOD to interpret "spirit of the law"?

And, AGAIN, the focus on partnership benefits alone which, as important as they are, only affect the MINORITY of LGBs in the services obscures the fact that Secretary Panetta is STILL refusing to include all of them under the crucial protections against harassment and discrimination of the Military Equal Opportunity Program.

ATTENTION SLDN, HRC—and NGLTF and Lambda Legal: it’s YOUR move now—and because you had virtually NOTHING to do with even this partial step happening it’s far past time you started EARNING the money the gay community sends you. Mere LIP SERVICE to existing to FIGHT for us is no longer enough.