FILE - In a March 24, 1994 file photo, U.S. soldiers board a C-5 transport plane bound for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, at Mogadishu, as the U.S. military's presence in Somalia winds down. By the time U.S. military forces left Somalia in 1994 after entering the lawless nation more than a year earlier to stop a famine, 44 Army soldiers, Marines and airmen had been killed and dozens more wounded. But the U.S. has come back, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat. (AP Photo/John Moore, File)

(CNSNews.com) – The Senate passed the 2012 Defense spending bill Thursday on a 86-13 vote, funding the Defense Department through the end of the fiscal year.

The House passed the bill Wednesday night on a 238-136 vote, splitting the Democratic caucus evenly 93-93.

The bill did not contain a repeal of the prohibition on sodomy in the military that the original Senate-passed version had. That provision was stripped out during a House-Senate conference committee at the behest of House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.).

Earlier versions of the bill had earned a veto threat from President Obama over provisions restricting the administration’s ability to hold terrorism detainees. Those provisions were modified to give the government more flexibility in handling terrorism suspects, and the White House withdrew its veto threat Wednesday.

Originally, the Senate-passed version of the bill contained an unreported provision repealing Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) – the law that governs the conduct of members of the armed services.

Article 125 prohibited sodomy among members of the military – a target for gay rights activists. Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the gay rights group Service Members Legal Defense Network (SLDN), said it was a disappointment that the repeal of the sodomy ban failed.

“The Senate was right to take this action, and it is unfortunate that their attempt to end Article 125 did not prevail,” Sarvis said Wednesday.

House Armed Services committee sources told CNSNews.com’s Pete Winn that the Obama administration had “made its pitch” for overturning the ban, but that lobbying effort failed.

The bill now goes to President Obama for his signature.