Gag+Rule+Neg+-+Repeal+DADT+CP

Counterplan Text: Repeal DADT.

Observation 1 is Competition

The CP competes through the NB's, any perm would link.

Observation 2 is Solvency

1. Their Feminist Daily Newswire card doesn’t talk about increasing aid in the context of overturning the gag rule. It doesn’t even make coherent sense.

2. Their plan says support, not financial support, and even if support means aid, they still don’t solve because their card provides no clear link between aid and overturning the gag rule.

3. DADT galvanizes opposition to US foreign policy and undermines US moral leadership

Scott Morris, JD American University, Washington College of Law, 2001 (9 Am. U.J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 423)

European views on the issue of Gays in the military are progressing toward full acceptance at a quicker pace than appears to be the case in the United States, where Don't Ask, Don't Tell appears to be a permanent fixture in the American military establishment. 79 The widening gap between civil rights for Gays in the United States versus other countries of the Western World poses potential problems for the United States. For instance, given the United States' history of using allegations of human rights abuses by Communist and Third World countries in negotiating economic and political agreements, laws such as Don't Ask, Don't Tell put American foreign policy at risk for chastisement by the international community as being hypocritical. 80 Perhaps more fundamentally threatening to the [*435] United States is the fact that the European frontier of civil liberties may be advancing more quickly than that of the United States, a nation that prides itself on being the leader of the free world. 81

4. Gay exclusion kills free speech and expression

David Cole and William Eskridge, law at Georgetown, Summer 1994 (29 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 319)

The First Amendment also has a strong social or political component. Its protection of individual autonomy and liberty engenders collective benefits in the body politic, by fostering a diverse citizenry and assuring that "debate on public issues [is] uninhibited, robust, and wide-open," as the Court said in New York Times v. Sullivan. 43 Homosexual conduct, from public hand-holding and kissing by same-sex couples to private sexual conduct, fosters the diverse polity that the First Amendment envisions. Public expression of same-sex intimacy is as important a critique of gender assumptions and gender roles in American society as any published treatise. 44 It is therefore not only individually expressive, but also socially valuable under the robust pluralism endorsed in Sullivan. The fact that gestures like kissing and hand-holding are symbolic of ideas and attitudes rather than literal statements of position in a debate does not diminish their importance. The public debate has never been limited to books, articles, letters to the editor, speeches, and signs; it has always included symbolic gestures such as dancing, visual art, advertising imagery, public demonstrations, clothing, and physical conduct. 45 While private homosexual conduct does not directly contribute to public debate in the way that public affirmations of homosexuality do, it nonetheless plays an indispensable part in shaping public debate. Because lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals explore and develop their sexual identity through private sexual conduct, that "private" conduct is critical to their ability to take part as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals in public life. Sodomy laws and the military exclusion are two of many mechanisms by which society has discouraged such personal exploration and development. The repression is political as much as personal, for it reflects a social effort to keep homosexuality "in the closet," not only hidden from the public but incapable of contributing to public discourse and politics. 46 Since the Stonewall riots of June 1969, large numbers of lesbians and gay men have defied the tyranny of the closet, and only that defiance has made it possible for their voices to be heard in American politics. So long as lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals kept their orientation a secret, they could "pass" in American society. 47 Passing not only exacted incalculable personal costs from individuals, but also discouraged the formation of an openly gay subculture and gay and lesbian political activism. 48 Once people started defying that suppression, they formed a thriving political as well as cultural community. That community could not exist without homosexual expression. For bisexuals, lesbians, and gay men, the personal is the political. As Lee Bollinger has suggested, the First Amendment serves a pedagogical function in reflecting our social commitment to tolerance. 50 Insisting that society restrain its impulse to persecute unpopular minorities, the First Amendment sets a public example that might inspire cooperative rather than exclusionary conduct throughout society. In the past, the First Amendment has protected the Amish, Jehovah's Witnesses, the NAACP, Communists, Nazis, and various ethnic groups -- all despised by popular majorities. 51 The First Amendment's willingness to insulate groups against suppression has contributed to its strength over time. By their sexual conduct, lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are creating or searching for their own identities and voices, and the First Amendment insists that this new group be given the same public space as previous groups have been afforded. Both the military policy and sodomy laws strike at the values of pluralism and tolerance implicit in the First Amendment. Kenneth Karst has shown that military service in American history has been a badge of citizenship, and that exclusions from military service reflect exclusions from citizenship. 52 In fact, he argues, the exclusion and later segregation of people of color, the exclusion and later segregation of women, and the exclusion of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals can be attributed to an ideology of "manhood," where the members of one race, one gender, and one sexual orientation are held up as the people who ought to run and defend our country. So, too, sodomy statutes offend the values of toleration. To prescribe by criminal law the forms of non-harmful sexual intimacy that consenting adults may engage in is the very definition of intolerance.