NSA won't say if it's spying on gays

I happened upon this story this morning:

The National Security Agency has responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network by saying it will "continue to neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence" of information obtained via surveillance of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender organizations, PageOneQ has learned.

The agency responded to attorneys for sldn, via a three page letter which may be seen here.

Steve Ralls, Communications Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network told PageOneQ that, "This is an example of the continued stonewalling sldn has encouterd throughout our work to find out what was truly happening. This a dissapointing response and it destroys any hope of a continued transparency of government and that should offend most Americans.

After reading that, it occurred to me that if this request had been put to any other administration the response would almost certainly have been an unambiguous denial that the NSA has any program of spying on people just because they are gay. Only under the Bush-Cheney dictatorship do we get this kind of behavior.

If they spy on people because they're gay, hey, they're probably spying on people because they're straight too.