Gay rights activists are growing frustrated with President Obama regarding his failure to move on abolishing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars homosexuals who admit their orientation from continuing to serve in the military. It is hard to fault them. After all, in his first year in office, President Obama and his allies in Congress have expended at least some effort on behalf of each and every one of his core support groups, including unions (“card check”), environmentalists (“cap and trade”), education progressives (education spending in the stimulus bill), and left-wing populists (the new crusade against evil bankers). But action on the signature federal issue of gay rights supporters (gay marriage, for better or worse, remains primarily a state issue for the foreseeable future) has been nearly non-existent.

The neglect for this loyal support group for Democrats is mystifying in both political and practical terms. Politically, this is a case where opposition is uniquely weak and fractured and bipartisanship is a real possibility. It is likely that President Obama’s advisers are skittish about the possibility that moving to abolish DADT would risk a reprise of the 1993 debacle where anti-gay opponents handed President Clinton his political head. But the intervening 17 years has changed more than it has left the same. Hostility to gay marriage notwithstanding, overall social intolerance for homosexuality has dramatically declined, to the point that legions of openly gay pop culture figures are not even controversial at all. While this social change has not generally made its way into the highly conservative military ranks, the decline is sufficient to blunt any serious political risk of generalized political backlash. They only people who would be outraged by getting rid of DADT at this point are those who weren’t ever going to vote for President Obama or Congressional Democrats anyway.

Further, there is a serious opportunity for real bipartisanship here. It is noteworthy that some of the most recent and articulate critics of DADT in recent years have been conservatives, including former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who bluntly condemned “bigotry that hurts our military” in a 2007 Washington Post editorial. A raft of former officers — a form of communication that usually indicates a coded message from within the ranks of the active-duty military — has also called for the policy to be modified. While there is certainly no groundswell of conservative support for opening up the military to gays, there are enough cracks in the conservative opposition to give President Obama a serious chance to peel off enough Republican votes to put more than just a pro forma veneer of bipartisanship on the effort.

The reason for this is the second reason that now is the time to move on abolishing DADT — the practical problems with the policy. It is noteworthy that a vastly disproportionate number of discharges under DADT take place at the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, California. This is where the military trains its linguists, most pertinently including those linguists that are vital to ongoing efforts against al-Qaeda. Getting rid of DADT would allow the military to retain people in critical skills like this during a time when those skills are desperately needed in the military. Indeed, continuing DADT is insanity in such situations. None of the recycled 1993 arguments about the imagined dangers posed by homosexuals to unit cohesion are likely to have as much bite when advocates of reform can point to such obvious disadvantages to indulging in anti-gay posturing.

At the end of the day, this is an issue where the President’s progressive instincts align with both political opportunities and the practical realities important to the very same moderates and independents that he is currently hemorraging from his political coalition. Thus, it is time to “man up”, Mr. President. The groundwork is now well-set and there are no more excuses for inaction. End DADT.