Mr. Speaker, this resolution would have us believe that a grave threat is presented to the security of this Nation by the policy of some institutions of higher learning to bar military recruiters from their campus because of the discrimination against gay and lesbian people by the military. But that, Mr. Speaker, is not the threat to our national security.
The threat to our national security is the policy of the military to refuse to use the talents and the abilities of gay people in defending our country.
One of the biggest problems we have in Iraq now is the shortage of people who know how to translate intelligence documents written in Arabic and Farsi, and yet they are dismissing linguists who can translate these documents for our use to save the lives of our troops because they are gay. This is insanity.
Our troops are paying with their lives because of the bigotry that this Congress has mandated on the military, number one.
Even that is not the real issue presented by this resolution. The real issue presented by this resolution has to do with free speech and association.
Private universities, private institutions have chosen to say, as part of their free speech, that they do not want on their campus recruiters from any organization, the military, any private company, anybody else, that discriminates against gay people and lesbian people; that engages in an unacceptable, to them, form of discrimination. It is not a question, as this resolution says, of equal access to military recruiters. All people, recruiters from all institutions that discriminate are barred from these campuses.
We should not have passed the bill that we did, but we passed a bill to say that, if they do that, if a private institution bars military recruiters and other recruiters on an equal basis, we will withhold Federal funds.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals says that is a violation of the first amendment. This resolution says who cares what the courts say. We do not care about the first amendment. We do not care about the courts. We know better.
We encourage the executive branch to follow the doctrine of non-acquiescence and not find a decision affecting one jurisdiction to be binding on another jurisdiction.
That is not the way we ought to legislate. This decision was decided by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The executive branch is going to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Let it appeal. Let us see what the Supreme Court says, if they accept the case.
The courts have to defend our liberties. It is the province of the courts, not of the Congress, to declare what the Constitution means.
Our liberties, the Bill of Rights, are protected from the majority. You never have to protect the majority from itself. You have to protect unpopular minorities. That is why we have a Bill of Rights and that is why we have the courts to enforce them. For Congress to come in and say the court is wrong and the executive should not enforce the order of the court is to show a disdain for the rule of law and a disdain for the spirit of liberty for which we are fighting in Iraq and for which our Armed Forces exists in the first place.
This resolution ought to be defeated on its merits.