(The) ruling arrived less than three months before the results of a Pentagon study evaluating the possible detrimental effects of repealing the policy is due to be presented to Congress.

A federal judge in California has ordered the United States military immediately to discontinue all enforcement of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which forbids open homosexuals from serving in its ranks.

U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside ordered the military “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have been commenced under the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Act.”

Phillips’ permanent injunction applies to acts pending under DADT and 10 U.S.C. § 654, the 1993 law banning homosexuals from service in the armed forces, as of Tuesday and before her judgment.

A month ago, Phillips, a Clinton appointee, had issued an 86-page opinion, declaring that DADT and the 1993 law violated the rights of homosexuals guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment (due process) and the First Amendment (the right of citizens to petition the government for redress of grievances).

She said she would issue a permanent injunction at a later date – a promise she fulfilled this Tuesday.

The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s request that she stay her ruling or even just limit its scope to the plaintiffs, the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual group which brought forward the suit on behalf of its 19,000 members.

Phillips’s ruling arrived less than three months before the results of a Pentagon study evaluating the possible detrimental effects of repealing the policy is due to be presented to Congress.

She claimed that the defendants, listed as the United States and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, failed to prove that DADT “was necessary to significantly further the Government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion.”

Phillips’s ruling today allows the Log Cabin Republicans to seek damages for attorneys’ fees and to file a motion for the costs of the suit “to the extent allowed by law.”

Source: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10101213.html

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