In looking at the failure of today’s legislative step toward repealing DADT, a few factors stick out.

First, Harry Reid is one of the following: 1) too busy petting Chris Coons and lusting after Kirsten Gillibrand to think straight; 2) pathetically inept as a legislator but smart enough to know Republicans would be blamed by the media for derailing the bill, even though his unwillingness to open it to amendments and debate is what killed it; 3) totally disingenuous about actually voiding the rule. Correct answer? 123. Rather like ABC, which for its part implemented #2b quite nicely.

Reid, whose greatest contribution thus far to national defense is his immortal comment that the war in Iraq was lost, was so ham-handed in his handling of the entire matter it’s difficult to not suspect this was the congressional equivalent of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. First, he tacked the measure regarding DADT, along with his y’all-vote-for-me-in-November-right-muchachos pander play otherwise known as the DREAM Act, onto a defense authorization bill. Then, he played schoolyard bully by stifling sound bites… er, debate, and stifled something of genuine value as well, namely amendments. Reid guaranteed failure from the beginning, even as he guaranteed avoiding being blamed for it by the MSM. He is a picture-perfect political idiot savant. Or, he was simply paying lip service to the entire matter without a single genuine intention of trying to get anything through the Senate.

That said, is the fight over DADT truly about gays in the military?

A little family history. My late father served in World War II. So did his sister, my late aunt. My father and mother, who passed away earlier this year, met during the war. They married in 1944, the night before my father shipped overseas where he served as a radio operator in a B-29 that flew out of Tinian. My aunt served mostly Stateside, eventually going to Germany just before the conflict there ended.

My parents were married fifty-five years before my Dad passed away. My aunt never married. She died a couple of years after my Dad, though at heart she died when he did. They were that close.

My aunt was gay.

Personally, I could care less if someone who wants to serve in the military is gay. If you’re willing to risk your life in the defense of my freedom, more power to you. I also believe said individuals are more than capable of exerting sufficient self-control to where their sexual preference will not be an issue.

At its core, the battle over DADT isn’t all that connected with the subject of gays in the military. DADT has nothing to do with right or wrong, discipline or disarray. Gays in the military are a fact. They were there before, they are there now, and they will be there in the future. It’s about the aggressively gay community’s ego in being able to, again, rub a legal victory in the faces of those who think differently. Well, too bad. If there is sufficient resistance in the military to openly gay members, then DADT, flawed as it is, should stand. Our nation’s security is of far greater importance than the ability to hoist another scalp on a rainbow-colored petard.

P.S. Speaking of from the beginning…