Without Kennedy, Gays in the Military Look for a Champion

As much as Sen. Ted Kennedy's death leaves a void in the health care debate, his voice will be doubly missed on other issues where finding consensus is equally, if not more, difficult and finding the right leader for the fight is essential.

Among the many issues he championed, Kennedy had planned to take the lead in the Senate on lifting the ban on gays in the military. The senator had been in the process of finding Republican support for such a bill when he was diagnosed with cancer and was unable to finish the work he had hoped to complete before he died.

It's too early to know who will take up where Kennedy left off. Other senators have expressed an interest in leading on the issue, only some of whom are on the Armed Services Committee. While it's not a requirement to have a committee member take the lead, the measure would have to go through the committee for a vote.

Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund that lobbies on the issue, said that Kennedy's legislative expertise and sway with his colleagues made him ideal for groups looking for someone to champion their cause. "He was certainly the go-to senator if you wanted to get a major legislative initiative through. If you wanted a seasoned legislator, you wanted Senator Kennedy first," Sarvis said. "And it's possible that some of us made too many [requests] and went to him too often."

Congress passed Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 1993 as a compromise between newly elected President Bill Clinton, who had promised to lift the ban on gays serving in the military, and members of Congress, who said they worried about the effect a policy change would have within the military ranks.

Kennedy was a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and had long championed gay-rights issues. When he spoke out against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004, he said on the Senate floor, "Make no mistake, a vote for the federal marriage constitutional amendment is a vote against civil unions, domestic partnerships and other efforts by states to treat gays and lesbians fairly under the law. It is a vote for imposing discrimination, plain and simple, on all 50 states."

Without Kennedy in the Senate, movement on lifting the ban on Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been slow this year, despite the high-profile support it has garnered in the past.

Although Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had tried to pass an 18-month moratorium on actions under Don't Ask, Don't Tell this summer, she said she could not find enough votes to move forward on the proposal without the threat of a filibuster.

Then-candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised in 2008 that he would lift the ban, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have said they're for lifting it, too. On the House side, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), an Iraq war veteran, has secured more than 150 co-sponsors for his bill to fully repeal 1993 law, according to Murphy's staff.

"It's not just one person saying I'll take the lead," Sarvis said of the need for a successor to Kennedy. "It's also [someone] who senators agree, 'This is person that we as a group want to coalesce behind on this.' "

Looking ahead, Sarvis said Kennedy's absence will undoubtedly create a large leadership vacuum on a range of issues, both mainstream and liberal, "and it's not clear yet who Democrats will coalesce behind."