and this jaw-dropping exchange between senator john mccain and a reporter. find out if someone i don t know if they are. they do not. they do not. they do not. you can say they are. that is the case, senator. major mike almy joins us live. and the senator standing for reelection by write-in scores a sad own goal against her own campaign. the rachel maddow show starts right now. today in the united states senate, language in the defense authorization bill that would let the military don t ask, don t tell fell to defeat. senate republicans, in fact, took the historic step of filibustering the entire defense authorization bill in order to maintain the don t ask, don t tell policy. they would not even allow debate on the defense bill because it included that language to let the military repeal its own policy on keeping gay people out of the military. and so we don t have a bill to fund the military this year. at least so far. and the don t ask, don t tell poli
find out if someone i don t know if they are. they do not. they do not. they do not. you can say they are. that is the case, senator. major mike almy joins us live. and the senator standing for reelection by write-in scores a sad own goal against her own campaign. the the rachel maddow show starts right now. today in the united states senate, language in the defense authorization bill that would let the military don t ask, don t tell fell to defeat. senate republicans, in fact, took the historic step of filibustering the entire defense authorization bill in order to maintain the don t ask, don t tell policy. they would not even allow debate on the defense bill because it included that language to let the military repeal its own policy on keeping gay people out of the military. and so we don t have a bill to fund the military this year. at least so far. and the don t ask, don t tell policy lives. what happens next? well, here is a clue. when i interviewed v
military members. 58% said they were opposed to overturning this policy. and many have said that this will cause them to reconsider whether or not they stay in the military. it will have an impact upon recruiting. i mean, this is an issue of retention and recruitment for the military and ultimately could lead back to the imposition of a draft in order to fill the numbers and quotas in the military. mr. frank, i know you have something to say at least about the poll that he quoted and you interjected about something talk about the draft, we go from letting gays serve openly to a possible draft, you just suggested. go ahead, mr. frank, i ll let you respond. these are fear tactics. polls show in canada and britain that when they ask service members if they if they wanted to serve with gays, two-thirds would absolutely refutes, but when they actually lifted the bans anyway, two people, two people, not the thousands predicted by the polls, actually left because polls don t predict b
today, president obama has taken the lead in the effort to end don t ask, don t tell and to allow gays to openly serve in the armed services. he minced no words calling on congress to repeal the don t ask, don t tell policy in his first state of the union address last week. this year i will work with congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. i want to bring in two guests on this topic. from new york, joining me, nathaniel frank, the author of the book unfriendly fire, how the gay ban undermines the military and weakens america, a senior fellow at the palm center in santa barbara, california and joining me as well is tony perkins of the family-based research council and also a veteran of the marines. thank you both for being here. mr. perkins, i ll start with you. certainly a statement that you put out about the president s statement saying that it would
express their opinions. you ve had over 1,000 staff officers, general officers who have spoken out against this policy who are retired and can speak without fire of retaliation. those officers have not served under don t ask, don t tell. wrap it up, mr. frank. go ahead and wrap it up there. yeah, lifting the ban will also allow a lot more gay people to come in, so there s no evidence that recruitment will suffer, but there is evidence that it will actually help, and i think this is a moral concern for social conservatives, very little to do with military effectiveness. gentlemen, i appreciate you both. appreciate the civility of the conversation. glad we could really, we all need to be sitting down and having a conversation about this, an important topic. certainly we ll hope to have you both back at some point to discuss this further, but, again, mr. perkins, tony perkins and nathaniel frank, thank you both for being here. have a good day. you, too. stay with us. quick