Tuesday, January 07, 2014

A lesson in anti-gay 'paraphrasing' via Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' memoir has just been published and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council sent out the following tweet:

This is the portion of Gates' memoir which Sprigg paraphrased:

“For me, 2010 was a year of continued conflict and a couple of important White House breaches of faith,” he writes. The first, he says, was Obama’s decision to seek the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays serving in the military. Though Gates says he supported the decision, there had been months and months of debate, with details still to work out. On one day’s notice, Obama informed Gates and Mullen that he would announce his request for a repeal of the law. Obama had “blindsided Admiral Mullen and me,” Gates writes. 

Now some may say that this still doesn't look good, but I disagree. Sprigg's tweet fails to mention that Gates supported the decision to repeal DADT. The only problem was that Obama, as per his prerogative as President, pushed for the decision more immediately than Gates wanted.

The way Sprigg tweets, it fits his organization's false narrative of Obama supposedly pushing a "radical homosexual agenda" when the truth is less about agenda and more about a simple disagreement as to the immediacy of policy change.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That, and Obama supported DADT repeal in his 2008 campaign. If Gates and Mullen didn't see it coming, then they weren't paying attention.

On the other hand, I fully expected Obama to throw gays under the bus the first time it was politically expedient to do so. I am *so* happy to have been wrong on that!