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An
Intolerant Minority
by Walter Brasch
Capt.
Joan Darrah (USN-ret.) was the Navy’s
first female intelligence officer.
Lt.
Col. William Winnewisser (USA-ret.) was a
battalion commander, executive officer of
the Army Operations Center at the Pentagon,
and a White House social aide.
Lt.
Col. Hank Thomas (USMC-ret.) was an infantry
and intelligence officer who served two
tours of duty in Vietnam ; he later served
as assistant secretary for international
affairs in the Reagan administration.
Lt.
Col. Steve Loomis, wounded in action in
Vietnam , was awarded the Bronze Star with a
“V” for valor.
Capt.
Joe Lopez, a West Point graduate, and
Blackhawk pilot, earned an Air Medal in Iraq
.
Capt.
Rebecca Kanis, a West Point graduate, was a
company commander in Special Operations at
the time she resigned her commission after
nine years of service.
Capt.
Phil Adams, a Naval Academy graduate, spent
eight years as a Marine infantry officer.
1
Lt. Gina Foringer, during her four years of
service, was a convoy commander in Somalia
when she was wounded in action.
SSgt.
Eric Alva, who lost a leg in Iraq , served
13 years in the Marines before receiving a
medical discharge.
Each
of them has a stack of medals and
commendations; each of them is gay or
lesbian. And every one of them is immoral,
according the Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Allowing
gays and lesbians to serve in the military
“says that we, by policy, would be
condoning what I believe is immoral
activity,” Gen. Pace told the editorial
board of the Chicago Tribune. When Pace’s
comments went public, he was forced to issue
a written statement, but never apologized
for his opinion about gays: “In expressing
my support for the current policy, I also
offered some personal opinions about moral
conduct. I should have focused more on my
support of the policy and less on my
personal moral views.”
That
policy is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”
established in 1993 during Bill Clinton’s
first term as president, and later enhanced
to include “don’t pursue, don’t
harass.” It was a “compromise.” The
military would accept gays, and not ask them
their sexual preferences as long as they don’t
speak out in favor of homosexuality,
acknowledge their lives, or enter into any
relationships with members of the same sex.
Harry
Truman, by executive order, had dictated the
end of segregation in the military. Clinton
planned to do the same for those who are
involved in same sex relationships.
Opposing him were all of the military’s
“big guns,” including Gen. Colin Powell,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs. When Powell, a
Black, was asked by gay-rights groups, and
thousands of others, how he could support
discrimination against gays while
acknowledging that desegregation of the
military allowed his own career to flourish,
Powell merely said that the two were not the
same. It was Powell, however, who crafted
the revised policy.
Among
the reasons the military claimed why gays
couldn’t serve was because their presence
would hurt troop morale and undermine combat
effectiveness; gays could be security risks—they
were likely to be blackmailed or
compromised, said military commanders. The
Navy’s Crittenden Report in 1957
discounted that reasoning. During the
early 1980s, the Department of Defense
issued an official declaration opposing gays
in the military; the 124-word inflammatory
new policy was designed to justify reasons
why gays must not be allowed to serve.
However, an independent RAND Corp. report in
July 1993 found no logic to exclude gays
from service, and concluded that military
readiness would not be affected by having
gays in service.
Congressional
support to eliminate the ban came from
several prominent Democrats, and one
highly-respected Republican—Sen. Barry
Goldwater (1909-1998). Goldwater, a pilot
who retired as an Air Force major general,
had numerous times had spoken out against
the emerging dominance of the Religious
Right in Republican politics. Although there
is no clear-cut evidence that President Bush
is homophobic, there is significant evidence
that the continuation of the ban against
gays in the military has been strengthened
by the resurgence of the influence of the
religious right wing during the Bush–Cheney
Administration.
Because
the military is a hierarchy, with constant
jockeying for duty stations and promotion,
there is no question that the Chairman’s
views about what he believes is the
immorality of homosexual behavior will
influence every person in his command.
About
65,000 gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or
transgenders now serve in the military, all
of them officially hiding their non-military
lives, according to the Urban Institute and
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN).
Almost 9,500 members of the military,
including hundreds in critical combat
specialties, including 50 Arabic language
specialists, have been forced out of the
military between 1993 and 2005, according to
SLDN.
In
2003, on the 10th anniversary of the “Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Brig. Gen.
Keith Kerr (USA-ret.), RADM Alan Steinman (USCG-ret.),
and Brig. Gen. Virgil Richard (USA-ret.), in
a signed op-ed column in the New York Times,
all stated they were gay. In an op-ed column
for the New York Times, Gen. John M.
Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said he believed “if gay
men and lesbians served openly . . . they
would not undermine the efficacy of the
armed forces.”
State
and federal laws prohibit discrimination
against a person’s sexual orientation; the
FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement
Agency, and National Security Agency all
have openly gay agents; The armed forces,
says Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO
commander and Democratic presidential
candidate in 2004, “are the last
institution in America that discriminates
against people; it should be the first that
doesn’t.”
Israel,
which unarguably has one of the world’s
most elite and effective military
operations, officially bans discrimination
against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and
transgenders. Israel “has more gay rights
than all of the U.S. ,” says Denny Meyer,
a former Vietnam era Army sergeant first
class who is also editor of the Gay Military
Times. Almost 30 nations—including most
countries of the European Union—have no
problems with anyone’s sexual orientation.
The United Kingdom , whose soldiers serve
with Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq , is
even “actively recruiting” gays and
lesbians, says Meyer. Of the 26 NATO
nations, only the United States , Portugal ,
and Turkey don’t allow gays to openly
serve in the military. And Turkey , says
Meyer, “is close to allowing gays to
serve.”
Almost
three-fourths of all military personnel say
they are “comfortable” with having gays
and lesbians in their units, according to a
Zogby poll in December. About one-fourth of
all military persons say they know that a
member of their unit is gay—and it has no
effect upon them.
Former
Sen. Chuck Robb, who served 34 years in
active and reserve duty as a Marine officer,
in 2002 said that “the threat to morale,”
which some believe will occur if there is a
policy to permit gays in the military, “comes
not from the orientation of a few, but from
the closed minds of many.”
About
79 percent of all Americans believe the
military should allow gays to serve openly,
according to a Boston Globe poll conducted
in May 2005; a FOX News poll two years
earlier revealed that 64 percent of all
Americans had no problem with allowing gays
to serve openly. About two-thirds of all
Catholics and slightly more than half of all
Protestants believe in the rights of gays to
serve, according to a Pew Research Center
study of March 2006.
Rep.
Martin Meehan (D-Mass.), with 114
cosponsors, including conservative
Republicans, on Feb. 28 introduced the
Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R.
1246) that would end “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell,” and replace it with absolute
nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation. With most of the world’s best
military units not worried about the
presence of gays in their ranks, with large
majorities of both military and civilian
personnel believing gays should be allowed
to serve openly, and with a Democratic
Congress that claims it plans to make
necessary social changes, now is the time
strike down the hostility of an intolerant
minority and to eliminate one more form of
officially-sanctioned discrimination.
Assisting on this column were the American
Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER) and
Servicemens Legal Defense Network (SLDN).
For further information, contact AVER www.aver.us,
SLDN www.sldn.org,
Human Rights Campaign Foundation www.hrc.org,
and Gay Military Signal gaymilitarysignal.com.
Walter
Brasch is professor of journalism at
Bloomsburg University and a syndicated
social issues columnist. His latest books
are 'Unacceptable': The Federal
Government's Response to Hurricane Katrina
and America's Unpatriotic Acts: The
Federal Government's Violation of
Constitutional and Civil Rights,
available at most online stores. "An
Intolerant Minority" first appeared on OpEdNews.com,
and several other online and print newspaper
sites. You may contact Dr. Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu
or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com
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