Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said the Senate's too busy right now to bother with gays in the military, according to Politico:
“We have a very heavy, busy agenda and a few months left to do it. So it may not be now, but that
doesn't mean it won't be soon.”
And Ted Kennedy's gone:
"As he was battling brain cancer, Kennedy was absent from the Senate for nearly the entire year until his death. 'Sen. Kennedy is the lead sponsor of the bill; obviously with his illness, those issues , any number of issues that he was the leader of are complicated by his absence,' David Scott, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for gay rights.
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, whose main goal is to end the policy, said that Kennedy's illnesses 'accounted for some of the delay in the introduction' of the bill, but said they were continuing to talk with other Democratic senators and hoped to have a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in the fall.
About 18 months ago, Kennedy told Sarvis' group and gay-rights activists that he wanted to be the lead sponsor of a bill to repeal the current law — but first he wanted to get some Republican support. 'He felt very strongly about it being bipartisan,' Sarvis said.
Kennedy never ended up introducing a bill this Congress, and now it'll be up to another Senate Democrat to step up to push the controversial issue."
