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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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U.S. Senate Next Stop for Gays in the Military Issue

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Tuesday, June 1, 2010   

LAS VEGAS - It's now up to the U.S. Senate to decide whether the time has come to lift the ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Nevada supporters of lifting the ban spent the Memorial Day weekend celebrating their victory in the U.S. House, and thanking Congresswomen Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus, who voted in favor of repealing the ban. The measure passed on a vote of 234 in support to 194 opposed.

Candice Nichols, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, says she is elated.

"I think the importance of this vote can't be overstated. It's the beginning of an end to this horrible ban, and hopefully in the real near future it will be taken up by the Senate and we'll see a repeal."

Under a compromise, the military has been given until December to issue a report on how including openly-gay soldiers would affect the armed services. Nichols says Senator Al Franken of Minnesota was in Nevada last week, stumping for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is up for reelection this year, and they asked Franken about the likely impact of lifting the ban.

"We posed the question to him, and he said in his tours of the Middle East, the troops don't care; they know who's gay there and who's not. So it's not as big an issue in the military as everyone seems to think it could be."

Nichols believes the nation's all-volunteer army will benefit by lifting the ban, because more young gays and lesbians in Nevada will start considering the military as a realistic career option.

"They'd be not seeing that as such an issue and thinking that they would have to go back in the closet. If they can be who they are, and not have to be ashamed of who they are, I think we will see a lot of our young people, more and more, joining the military."

The Senate is expected to take up the Defense spending bill this summer. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted in favor of including the repeal as part of the bill. Some Republican senators are now threatening to filibuster the spending bill as a result.

A spokesperson for Senator Reid said that at a time when the nation is fighting two wars, Reid cannot imagine anyone wanting to turn away qualified people who want to serve our country.




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