On Monday, Sept 20, I found myself outside Usdan with the Brandeis Democrats and Triskelion, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer alliance at Brandeis, urging passersby to call their senators and help repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the policy that bans openly gay people from serving in the military. Excitement and tensions on campus were high-it seemed like the government might actually end the discriminatory law. Then came Tuesday, Sept 21. The senate voted on the Defense Authorization Bill, which included a provision for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." John McCain led the Republican filibuster against the provision, stalling the bill at a vote of 56-43, short of the 60 votes needed to stop the filibuster that was preventing its passage.

So what exactly is the problem? "Don't ask, don't tell" is a violation of human rights that denies gays the freedom to be open about their sexuality in the military, a concept Republicans don't seem to grasp. Why is it that people don't understand the need to repeal it?

Well, for one thing, people have used the argument that a change in the policy would hurt unit cohesion. Apparently the troops can handle bombs, grenades and guns but not the fact that one of them is gay. And yet, Representative Patrick Murphy, the Iraq War veteran who led the fight in Congress to repeal the law, said, "In Iraq, my men and I didn't care whether a paratrooper was gay or straight." Are we supposed to make decisions about what the troops think without consulting the troops?

And yet 13,000 soldiers have been discharged since 1993 as a result of "don't ask, don't tell." And the ban is supposed to keep us safe? According to Representative Murphy, that number includes 60 Arabic translators. These men and women could be helpful in a war in an Arabic-speaking country, don't you think? What does being gay have to do with interpreting Arabic or even holding a gun?

Murphy also claims that the argument against unit cohesion is "the same argument used against allowing blacks to serve with whites when President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military in 1948." Murphy also points out that countries like Britain and Israel allow openly gay members. And he says there hasn't been "any detrimental impact on unit cohesion" in these countries.

According to President Bill Clinton, who originally pushed for the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the early 1990s, the current policy is not the one he advocated for 17 years ago. According to the New York Daily News, Clinton says that Colin Powell billed the law as one under which "gay service members would never get in trouble for going to gay bars, or marching in gay rights parades as long as they weren't in uniform."

While the discrimination against troops openly proclaiming their sexuality when wearing uniform is bad enough, the law has been distorted so that troops can never openly speak about their homosexuality. In fact, Clinton went on to tell the Daily News that the only reason he proposed "don't ask, don't tell" was to stop Congress from passing "an absolute ban on gays in the military." The time has come to up the ante; we should concentrate on full and equal rights for everyone.

Now, seeing that the vote has already happened, how can we as students make a difference? According to CBS, there is a possibility of a lame-duck vote in December. This means that Democrats could still try and pass the repeal before the new influx of Republicans happens, presumably in January. We need to take a stand and lobby our senators like we have never done before. If the government feels no qualms about limiting the basic human rights of a certain group of people, what's to say that it won't continue this trend to other groups? These are our peers, our friends. We all know someone who is gay, whether that person is a family member, a friend or even ourselves-why deny them the same rights to free speech that the rest of Americans have? As American citizens, we have a duty to protect the rights upon which this country was founded-Locke's natural rights -and to make sure that those we put into positions of government adhere to the law of the land: the Constitution. We need to push not only for the re-vote on the policy in the lame-duck vote but also for sanity and bipartisanship. We need to make senators from both sides of the aisle see the need for a repeal. But Republicans continue to claim that a lame-duck vote would be going against the will of the American people.

According to Politico, 75 percent of Americans support the repeal. If three-quarters of the American people support the repeal, then the senate Republicans are obviously not doing their jobs well. We elect representatives to use their judgment, but at the end of the day, they are accountable to their constituencies. If three out of four Americans want the law repealed, then the filibuster by the Republicans was entirely partisan and had little to do with the desire of the American public.

Shouldn't the government protect the basic rights laid out in the Constitution? Those serving in the military are our age and of our generation. Are we going to turn our backs on them while they refuse to do the same to us? Are we going to deny them their basic rights while they continue to protect our lives and our rights? According to Politico, the desire to repeal the ban is highest among those aged 18 to 29. Shouldn't we be a part of this statistic? Shouldn't we stand beside our peers and fight for what is right?