The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network will be meeting with your U.S. Senators and Representatives in the coming weeks to encourage them to sign on as co-sponsors of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (MREA), which would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  It was sponsored last session by Marty Meehan (D-MA).

Your help is needed.

Thousands of people have already signed SLDN’s petition (yours truly included!) asking the new Congress to pass MREA, which would establish a law that replaces “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with a non-discrimination policy. But we haven’t yet reached our goal of 12,500 signatures.

Will you join us by signing today?

http://www.sldn.org/congressAccording to the latest from SLDN,

It’s not going to be easy to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” For every phone call or congressional office visit we make, our opponents are doing the same. As the Politico wrote Monday:

“The new president’s position on scrapping the ban on gays serving openly in the military may be a one-word yes, but overturning the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy will be anything but simple.

   “The issue of gays in the military arose early in President Bill Clinton’s first term, throwing him into a politically explosive debate with Congress and sapping him of early political capital.

   “Some Republicans are hoping Obama makes the same mistake. So their goal is to drive a wedge among the Democrats — particularly on the House Armed Services Committee, where Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and some other Democrats lean to the right.”

We can’t let that happen. We need to give every member of Congress we visit a tangible message from their constituents: The time to get “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” off the books is now, in this legislative cycle, regardless of party.

Why is the goal 12,500 signatures? Because that’s the number of service men and women — many with critical skills — who have been discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation.

We can’t wait any longer for our laws to be fair, and for our military to be more effective.

Please sign now, and ask your friends and family to sign too:

http://www.sldn.org/congress

Thank you for your support.

Aubrey Sarvis

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

P.S.: Please remember to sign up for our Freedom to Serve rally in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 2009. Join us on Capitol Hill as we call on Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

http://www.sldn.org/rallyrsvp

Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group