AKA William

This weekend Secretary of Defense said that a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wasn’t an administration priority. (Watch the video of his comments.)

Well, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), the agency that provides free, confidential legal services to all those impacted by DADT, ain’t having it. And their response, at the very least, calls into question Obama’s much self-touted ability to multi-task.

In a press release issued by the SLDN this weekend:

WASHINGTON, DC — When asked about a timetable on revisiting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this morning on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that he and the president have “a lot on our plates right now. Let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”

“Sec. Gates hardly gave a sound reason for kicking ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ down the road — or essentially back tracking on a campaign promise made by his Commander in Chief,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “I trust the secretary was not speaking for President Obama, who, hopefully, will issue the call for repeal when he sends his Defense Department budget to Congress in a few weeks. This is about timely leadership.”

Sarvis continued. “It’s also called multitasking. Right now is the time — while we’re engaged in two wars — we need the most qualified men and women serving. This is not the time to keep firing linguists and intelligence analysts because of their sexual orientation. The longer the president and Pentagon delay the issue, the fewer linguists and intelligence analysts the Pentagon will have to call on to fight terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

This statement really does legitimately call into question the Obama commitment to LGBT issues. Yes, he has done a great deal for us in the past two months, but, as he said during his campaign in response to the ill-conceived McCain campaign suspension, “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. It’s more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people.

Why does the ability to multitask always meet its limits when it comes to us gays? We’ll find out in a few weeks if we are, once again, too much to juggle.