On “Unfriendly Fire”

(This article was going to be the May 2009 Panzee Press cover story; it never appeared, however, as they halted production in April 2009.)

March 2009 saw the release of the book Unfriendly Fire:  How The Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank, a senior research fellow at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Frank’s non-fiction account describes the background, creation, and effects of the don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) policy regarding homosexuals serving in the military.  “It’s a tale whose resonance remains far stronger today than reason can possibly dictate.  But, then, reason has only a limited role in the formation of prejudice.” (page 9)

Background:  Moving Towards “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Sodomy, or unnatural sexual penetration, was first named as a military crime during a 1917 revision to the Articles of War.  Its behavioral guidelines applied to both heterosexuals and homosexuals – those terms themselves only recently having been coined – but “its formulation reflected a new understanding that ‘sodomists’ were a group of people with a coherent identity” (5).  Homosexual discrimination was further “systematized” during World War II; military & civilian psychiatrists, using mostly ineffective research methods and citing stereotypical behaviors, helped the Department of Defense (DoD) formulate its early regulations that banned gays and lesbians as being “unsuitable for military service.”  This language was changed in 1981 to “incompatible with military service” to avoid legal challenges, and cited a laundry list of “alleged homosexual dangers” (10) that would arise – with no basis in fact – to justify the exclusion. 

Despite the greater awareness, tolerance, and acceptance of homosexuality in civilian society during the 1980s, the military “lost seventeen thousand of its troops to gay exclusion” (11).  But groups such as the Military Freedom Project were working hard to increase public awareness and lobbying Congress to lift the ban.  Moving into the early 1990s, the major players (whose work would result in the DADT policy) began with Bill Clinton – largely considered the first “gay-positive” president – and his relationship with David Mixner, a gay political and strategic consultant; their close association “was part of the reason why gays in the military became a priority in the new Clinton administration” (15).  The pro-ban forces were led at first by renowned military sociologist Charles Moxnos, who had the ears of top military brass and the Pentagon since his work on Army racial integration in the 1950s; it was Moxnos who would eventually coin the phrase, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The year preceding Clinton’s first term saw a number of high-profile gay discharges, including Joseph Steffan, Petty Officer Keith Meinhold (whose discharge would eventually be overturned), Lieutenant JG Tracy Thorne, and Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer.  In each case the individual was repeatedly acknowledged as an outstanding performer, but their homosexual status gave sufficient merit for their discharge.  Additionally, a 1988 report by the Pentagon’s Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center (PERSEREC) found only isolated examples of homosexuals involved in espionage (6 of 130 cases since 1945) and “concluded that being gay, on its own, was not a security risk at all” (13), thus undermining one reason top military officials cited for retaining the gay ban.  This report, along with the high-profile homosexual discrimination cases and his courting of the gay vote (through Mixner’s influence) led Clinton to float the idea of lifting the ban as an early act of his presidency.

At the time, though, the morality positions both the military ranks and most Americans made lifting the gay ban an unpopular choice.  Conventional wisdom holds that open homosexuality didn’t fit with the military, which “relies on discipline and a heightened sense of its own virtue as an antidote to the unavoidable fact that it’s ultimately about killing people” (29).  Feeding on these fears and moral objections, the rising power of the Christian right rallied against Clinton’s plans.  Evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson mobilized their long reach and urged their followers to pound Washington with their message to keep homosexuality out of such an esteemed institution.  In 1993 anti-gay conservative Bill Horn distributed thousands after thousands of his video The Gay Agenda to military officers and members of Congress; the 20-minute video depicted gay pride parades, crying children, and people who claimed to have overcome their homosexuality.

The religious right had inside help, as many military officers were themselves evangelical Christians that opposed lifting the ban.  Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis’ six-part profile “The Homosexual Subculture” was entered into the Congressional Record though it was built from horrendously shoddy research and included mostly preconceived notions, such as how gays  “often model their actions after the Nazi party.”  Major Melissa Wells-Petry, an Army lawyer, wrote pro-ban literature of her own, and along with Col. Maginnis were part of the Pentagon’s 1993 Military Working Group (MWG) assigned to find options that would allow the gay ban to continue but still somehow align with President Clinton’s wishes.  The group’s results would find their way into the final DADT policy, and worked to frame the ban based on an individual’s conduct – in keeping with other military policies – versus the discriminatory sense of banning a person based on their status.  But despite the emphasis on conduct over status, the MWG “made clear that the real basis for its opposition to openly gay service was moral” (44).

A purely moral argument, however, would meet considerable legal challenges, so those who sought to retain the ban framed their positions with circular logic and unfounded suggestions of dire consequences:

• Privacy.  When Joint Chiefs Chairman General Colin Powell testified on military homosexual service to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1993 (hearings convened by committee chairman and pro-ban ally Sam Nunn) he explained how open homosexuality would infringe on service members’ privacy, yet also cited the near-total lack of privacy inherent in military life.
• Implied Prejudice.  Senator Nunn echoed Powell with another common pro-ban argument:  “…active and open homosexuality by members of the armed forces would have a very negative effect on military morale and discipline” (85).  Speculative statements such as these had no basis in fact but instead contained an imbedded sense of fear and prejudice, suggesting the military’s heterosexual community could not endure or work closely with this seemingly unnerving portion of the population without undermining their presumably higher morale standards.
• Security Risk.  The pro-ban contingent argued that gays and lesbians were a greater security risk because of how they lived their lives, ignoring how a policy such as DADT would only push gays and lesbians further into a life of secrets which could only increase the risk, to say nothing of the contrary evidence offered by the Pentagon’s own PERSEREC report.
• Slippery Slope.  The various fear-mongers of the religious right insisted – speculatively – that homosexual military service was just a first step in a “slippery slope,” and that with this victory gays and lesbians would then demand a plethora of new (undeserving?) liberties.
• The AIDS Threat.  Military and civilian pro-ban supporters used the fear of this new threat to scare the decision-makers.  Allowing open homosexuality to serve in the rank and file, the argument went, would invariably introduce “HIV-positives” into the fighting force – imagine the hesitancy of saving a fallen comrade with AIDS-tainted blood!  This argument neglected to mention that the armed forces had been screening for AIDS since 1985, and that forcing homosexuality into a covert and unspoken climate would serve only to exacerbate the situation.

The 1988 PERSEREC report was only one example of evidence that was suppressed to prevent undermining the pro-ban argument.  Another potent example was a study commissioned by Clinton’s defense secretary Les Aspin.  Known as the Rand study, military social scientists from the Rand Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute used an exhaustive and “methodological approach” (as characterized by one Pentagon official) to create a 500-page report released in July 1993.  The Rand study “concluded that sexual orientation alone was ‘not germane’ in determining who should serve” and that lifting the ban “could be implemented without major problems if senior leaders got behind the change and clear guidelines were disseminated” (114).

There was, however, some acknowledgement that the “evidence” offered to maintain the gay ban had its credibility problems.  During the Senate Armed Services hearings, sociologist David Burrelli from the Congressional Research Service twice stated during his mostly pro-ban testimony that “the extent to which open homosexuality in the ranks would prove sufficiently disruptive to justify continued exclusion of homosexuals is not known” (124).  Regardless, the Department of Defense had liberty to select which research it chose to consider since “federal courts have repeatedly held that the military is exempt from the use of facts in forming policy on gay service” (123).

Another category of evidence the Pentagon ignored concerned the parallel situations of open homosexuality among U.S. foreign allies.  The Rand study found 24 nations with a comprehensive nondiscrimination policy for its service members, and our more familiar allies – Australia, Israel, Canada and Great Britain – struggled their way to nondiscrimination in the years surrounding the Pentagon’s own considerations.  Australia tightened its regulations in 1986, but “the needs of the [Australian] military as much as the social and cultural pressures for greater tolerance” (139) caused the Australian Defense Forces to adopt a full nondiscrimination policy in 1992.  The Israeli Defense Forces in 1993 lifted its own (albeit slightly softer) policy in 1993, ironically citing Clinton’s “support for gay service [as] influential in driving debate in Israel.” (140)  The Canadian Forces had a gay ban policy similar to the United States, but the passing of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1985 prompted five service members to file suit and, while “opposition was intense” (138) the Canadian military settled the case and changed its policy to full nondiscrimination in 1992.

As it concerned Great Britain, “the same rationales were invoked to justify the exclusion rules…as in the United States.  Only the spelling was different.” (142)  The British Ministry of Defence formed a team in 1995 to explore the possibility of lifting its ban, but they fumbled and moralized their findings and recommended retaining the ban to preserve the British military “way of life.”  The European Court of Human Rights – to which Great Britain, as a member nation, was bound – issued a ruling against the Ministry’s policy in 1999, thus forcing the Ministry to revoke the policy in January 2000.

As the militaries for each of these ally countries began policies allowing open homosexuality, they found that “the only effects on lifting gay exclusion rules have been positive ones…none of the crises in recruitment, retention, resignations, morale, cohesion, readiness, or ‘operational effectiveness’ came to pass.” (145)   The Palm Center, which in 2000 investigated the potential impact of reversing the gay ban in these nations, heard repeatedly and consistently that the reversal in policy had no negative impact.  In 2006, the British Royal Air Force even began offering survivor benefits to same-gender couples and became a sponsor in gay pride festivals.  In the growing amount of multinational forces conducting high-risk defensive or offensive maneuvers, American soldiers have served alongside or been led into battle by openly gay or lesbian enlisted and officers with no detrimental effect on their readiness, discipline or morale – they were able to function effectively and without incident.

But for the United States, the examples of foreign nations’ open policies were, like all other credible evidence, brazenly ignored or dismissed – fear, prejudice, and moral judgments would instead carry the day.  In September 1993 “the full Senate voted to codify this impossibly convoluted policy into law…for the first time in history, the policy on gay service was a matter of federal law…thereby making it much harder to change in the future” (110).  The House of Representatives followed suit shortly thereafter, and on November 30, 1993 President Clinton signed the bill into law.  After the Pentagon drafted regulations on its implementation, DADT went into effect on March 1, 1994.

Impact:  The Disaster of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

The rationale behind DADT centered mostly around the notion of conduct versus status; though they may have wished to, no one was saying that homosexuals weren’t allowed to serve, but any conversational, behavioral, or other indication of their homosexuality gave sufficient grounds for discharge:  “…the language of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ – which says gays and lesbians are an ‘unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline’ – sent a loud message that gays were unwelcome and even dangerous” (168).   The policy, while being formed, was postured as finding a compromise between a complete ban on homosexuality and open homosexuality.  DADT did not find this happy medium, but instead made the environment for homosexuals in the military more dangerous, covert and frightening, and created a greater possibility of administrative discharge – in “a string of sordid tales of dubious discharges, gay soldiers have been routinely booted not for anything they did but simply because it was impossible, at one time or another, for them to conceal the fact that they were gay” (178).  The number of homosexual discharges rose each year after the policy went into effect, and by 2001 the figure had nearly doubled from 1992.  The number of discharges would begin to drop starting in 2002, but a nation at war (as we’ll see later) has different considerations than during peacetime.

DADT was a massively confusing policy to implement.  As attacks, harassment, and coercion against gays and lesbians increased, attempts were made to clarify the policy by tacking on additional pithy guidelines such as “don’t harass” and “don’t pursue,” though they did little to improve the environment.  “The difficulty of defining what it truly means to ‘ask’ or ‘tell’ lies at the root of endless problems with the policy” (213).  The challenge of military life as a homosexual grew as the policy extended its impact to all corners of the institution:

• Gay and lesbian servicemen had their access to support services severely restricted, as discussions with physicians, psychologists and clergymen were often used as evidence to initiate discharges.  This situation was exacerbated with overseas deployments where civilian medical and spiritual options were mostly unavailable.
• Support services or inclusion of same-gender families could no longer be used as any documentation (such as beneficiary designations, next-of-kin, housing) were yet another avenue to be “outed.”
• While the estimated costs to replace the over 12,000 service members discharged since 1994 exceeded 350 million dollars, these numbers do not take into account the additional costs to replace those who, to escape the torturous life in the military closet, chose to separate or retire earlier than they’d planned.  As a variation, many who were drawn to the nature of military life felt a loss of trust – “Why should I serve in this environment?” – and purposely identified themselves to exploit the policy and abandon a system that they felt didn’t want them.
• For senior enlisted and officers, the expectation of marriage and a “traditional” family forced them into more lies, excuses, and made it all the more difficult in keeping their manner of living from being revealed.
• The “gag rule” of DADT prevented socialization and camaraderie for homosexual personnel whose paranoia grew as they feared any slip of the tongue could result in discharge.  The forced covert nature that DADT required eliminated the chance for trust and bonding; gays and lesbians rarely revealed their nature even to their closest military friends to prevent the additional burden placed on them to ensure they did not unwittingly reveal their friends’ status.
• While the policy stated “don’t ask, don’t tell,” there was no punishment for those that did ask, and any evidence of homosexuality that was improperly obtained was still allowed to be used as a means for discharge.  Recruiters restricted from asking about sexual orientation often used substitute questions to work their way around the policy:  “A Marine Corps recruiter said, ‘Because of President Clinton’s new policy, I can’t ask if you’re a fag.  So I’ll just ask if you suck cock.’” (179)
• As the years have progressed and homosexuality finds greater acceptance, DADT becomes more and more an antiquated policy, creating a detrimental relaxation and questioning of other policies.  “When a policy is so at odds with reality that it is virtually unenforceable, it undermines respect for all rules and regulations in the institution.” (268)

One of the most tragic individual accounts of the military environment under DADT concerns the highly publicized account of Private First Class Barry Winchell.  In July 1995, after months of harassment and being forced to defend himself, Winchell was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat while he slept.  (In 2002, President Bush nominated to lieutenant general the man who ran the base where the murder occurred.).

On a larger scale, “more than fifty-five Arabic language specialists are no longer working for the U.S. military because they are gay,” (221) which could well have caused the two-day delay in translating two phone calls intercepted from high-priority sources on Sept. 10, 2001 stating “Tomorrow is zero hour” and “the match is about to begin.”  The U.S. government’s Defense Language Institute (DLI) stipulates that Arabic, like Korean and Chinese, are non-Romantic “category 4” languages which only the most capable students can master; “DLI also seems to attract a large number of gay students.” (221)  In addition to severe shortages in intelligence, the rising number of gay discharges also caused greater risk to lives in the field, where translators were in short supply to assist frontline troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 2000s, the criticality of foreign language specialists prompted strategic reviews and recommendations to meet the need; the simplicity of rescinding DADT, however, was not considered. 

The American military, though, is not without its double standards.  While the concern about “unit cohesion” was often cited for retaining the gay ban, the worry about cohesion took a backseat during wartime.  The number of gay discharges plummeted during the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Iraq wars (including forced retention through “stop-loss” orders), yet returned to higher levels when peace broke out.  “The pattern raises serious questions about the elaborate rationale that the presence of open homosexuals would undermine unit cohesion.” (229)  Pro-ban steward Charles Moskos revealed the true nature of his unit cohesion arguments in a 2000 interview:  “Fuck unit cohesion – I don’t care about that.” (132)  Ironically, those attempting to leave the military during times of war often had to provide proof of their homosexuality beyond personal admission when it concerned critical jobs or potential deployment. 

The unpopularity of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the demand for a larger military force (Bush’s 2007 “surge”) placed additional burdens on military recruiting; the discriminatory nature of DADT only added to that burden.  Despite the money thrown at the problem in greater incentives, bonuses, and increases in advertising budgets, recruiting numbers still fell significantly.  2005 was a particularly difficult year – the Marine Corps missed the number for the first time in ten years – and Gen. Peter Pace, a former recruiter and new JCS Chairman, hoped to emphasize “message” by wanting to “…let our young folks and middle-age folks know how much we appreciate their service to their country.”  Later that same year, though, Pace revealed during a Wharton student conference that “The U.S. military mission fundamentally rests on the trust, confidence and cooperation among its members, and the homosexual lifestyle does not comport with that kind of trust and confidence.”

Gen. Pace’s comments (which would lead to his removal from the Chairman position) exemplified one manner by which the U.S. military held less appeal to the growing sophistication of America’s youth, instead being “a last bastion of discrimination” (249).  The military chose to lower their standards for permissible service and permit a growing number of “moral waivers” to bring drug abusers, murderers, kidnappers and gang members into the rank and file – translating to lower readiness, larger punitive discharges, and a lowering of operational effectiveness.  In 2005 the Pentagon made a concerted effort to reduce attrition by 1% to retain 3,000 troops – a number well below those that had been discharged under DADT since 9/11.  Recruiters cut corners, coerced, lied, and threatened to meet their projections, and civilians on Individual Ready Reserve who’d completely left the military were recalled to fill critical positions (at huge cost to the taxpayer) in numbers smaller than gay discharges for the exact same positions during the same timeframe.  Beth Schissel graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989 and completed medical school on the taxpayers’ nickel, only to be discharged in 2001 for being gay:  “I was created by the system and then discarded…it was a rude awakening for me to find out that I was a decorated junior officer and I couldn’t serve my country because of the person I loved.” (249)

Recruiters also had trouble gaining access to America’s youth because of restricted access to high schools and universities.  The discriminatory nature of DADT conflicted with many schools’ own nondiscrimination policies and, like any other employer who fails to meet the standards, military recruiters could not gain access to their students on-campus.  But rather than revisit the restrictive nature of DADT, Congress instead passed a law known as “the Solomon amendment” which revoked federal dollars – such as tuition assistance and research funds – for universities who would not allow the Pentagon to actively recruit on their campuses.  This was not a question of the colleges and universities (such as Harvard) having an active dislike for the military; they were punished instead for holding the U.S. military to the same standard they had for themselves and other prospective employers of their students.

Evolution:  The Future of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Sixteen years ago, American culture had not yet advanced to the position where, in 2009, we find a wider acceptance of homosexuality in our midst.  Popular culture reflects this evolution in television and film – 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, for one example, waited ten years before it was made and became an event not because it was a gay love story, but it was a love story whose characters happened to be gay.  American youth more and more finds homosexuality a non-issue – which makes the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy inexplicable and confusing.  “In 2008, a Washington Post – ABC News poll found that 75 percent of Americans favored openly gay service, including a majority of white evangelicals, veterans and Republicans.” (272) 

The most striking example of why DADT should be repealed lies in the hearts and minds of each gay and lesbian who currently serve their country without incident.  With each passing year, there are more and more examples of homosexuals in the military that create no impact on morale, discipline, privacy, or unit cohesion.  In the military rank and file, DADT is seen as so antiquated and out of touch that it’s become something of a joke.  “The notion that gays and lesbians must conceal their true selves to preserve the comfort of other troops is based on resistance not to the presence of gays in the barracks but to knowledge of that presence…If knowledge creates the problem, then does ignorance resolve it?” (292).

Ignorance and prejudice join themselves at the hip, so the repeal of DADT depends on “how many homophobes have to come around before a nation is allowed to do the right thing.  To what extent should public policy languish at the whim of prejudice?” (282)  The short answer is “fewer” as more of those that brought DADT into existence reverse their positions.   Retired general John Shalikashvili, a former JCS Chairman, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 2007 calling for the repeal of DADT.  Gen. Minter Alexander, the former chair of the Military Working Group whose conclusions led directly to the formation of DADT, was part of a bipartisan panel in July 2008 studying the issue.  “The panel found that lifting the ban is ‘unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion.’” (285)  Colin Powell made headlines when he crossed party lines to endorse Barack Obama, and in 2008 called for a Congressional review of the policy.  His friend and ally Sam Nunn again echoed Powell’s position when he called for a “thorough review” of the policy because “public and military opinion have ‘evolved’” (289).

Even pro-ban leader Charles Moskos acknowledged the difficulties in implementation and enforcement of DADT, but his sense of ownership of the policy (and the phrase) likely precluded a complete reversal.  It is fast becoming a self-evident truth that repealing DADT “would not result in a military awash in gay gossip and drag shows.  It would simply allow the gays in the service to get on with their jobs, reduce their stress, remove impediments to productive work, and free them from needing to misrepresent and isolate themselves.” (266)  The bipartisan Military Readiness Enhancement Act – which contains a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” – was introduced in 2005 and gains more and more support each year.  With a more enlightened White House resident in place, an air of optimism grows for the eventual repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

ABOUT THE BOOK:
In Unfriendly Fire, Nathaniel Frank hammers away at the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy disaster using exhaustive and substantiated research.  After years spent compiling facts and conducting interviews, Frank lays out the details (especially those that were ignored) and presents the undeniable conclusion that the United States, for all its “bastion of freedom” posturing, created a policy that imposes a moral judgment on a portion of its population, and discredits the ability of its people to uphold its principles of freedom while simultaneously living and dying for that freedom.  “There is something deeply embarrassing about the most powerful nation on earth imposing a gag rule on itself.” (236)

This article compares to Unfriendly Fire the way a painter’s drop cloth compares to the end result – you might be able to see the colors, but you’ve no idea what the painting looks like.  I found the picture painted by Nathaniel Frank and Unfriendly Fire to be evocative, disturbing, and a stunningly worthwhile investment of my time.

Philip Wheeler

Panzee Press Contributing Writer