Historic Senate vote: Congress repeals 17-year-old ban on gays in military

The U.S. Senate approved a bill Saturday, Dec. 18, to repeal the 17-year-old law banning openly gay people from serving in the military. The roll call vote on the measure, which came to the Senate Wednesday from the House, was 65 to 31. It had passed the House 250 to 175.

Because both bills are identical, it now moves to the president’s desk for his signature.

The White House issued a statement, calling the vote “an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security.”

The Senate vote to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) ban, which came at about 3:20 Saturday, seemed almost anti-climactic. It came three hours after a procedural vote (known as cloture) to send the bill to the Senate floor. The procedural vote was 63 to 33, with one senator not voting.

Two previous motions on cloture –- one in September and one last week — had failed.But this time, six moderate Republicans voted for sending the bill to the floor and for repeal: Senators Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and George Voinovich of Ohio.

On previous cloture votes, they had stood by a Republican Party demand that the Senate not consider “any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase….”