As a card carrying fag hag, and a graduate of a one of the most liberal universities in the USA, it is my belief that we are all created equal and therefore being born a straight woman shouldn’t entitle me to any rights that are not universal. It is in this spirit that I would just like to congratulate all those GLBT men and women who are now allowed to marry in the state of California. It is a huge move in the right direction and with any luck, the rest of the nation will soon follow in suit. However, it is only one victory in a still unequal world.
Randy Harrison, playing his role of Justin Taylor on Queer as Folk once stated, “I’m not a child. I’m turning 18 soon. That means I can vote, and get married, and join the army.” Not exactly true. While I’m fairly sure that the government hasn’t taken away the right to vote- though perhaps they have eliminated counting of votes- and it is now legal for Justin (if he were real) to marry, there is a tiny issue with the army thing.
Gay military members are attacked by peers under suspicion of their sexuality and there is little or no protection because “Don’t ask. Don’t tell” doesn’t work. “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” is the commonly known term for the U.S. military policy prohibiting anyone who has sexual contact with a person of the same sex from serving in the Armed Forces of the United States Army, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, United States Air Force, and the United States Coast Guard, or attending school at any of the United States military academies: West Point (Army), Annapolis (Navy), and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It also prohibits any homosexual or bisexual from disclosing his or her sexuality and speaking about any homosexual relationships, either past or present, during their service in the United States Armed Forces. The policy states however that if homosexuals or bisexuals hide his or her sexual orientation, commanders are not allowed to investigate his or her sexuality. When this was introduced in 1993 after President Bill Clinton’s campaign promise to allow all citizens regardless of sexual orientation to serve openly in the military, it was thought by many to be an improvement to the previous policy, a complete ban on those who are not heterosexual. According to The Pentagon’s New Policy Guidelines on Homosexuals in the Military, “Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct. The military will discharge members, who engage in homosexual conduct, which is defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender.” (The New York Times, July 20, 1993, p.A14)The problem, however, is that this policy is not always carried out and even when it is it doesn’t truly protect the gay men and women.
“President Clinton wanted to end discrimination in the armed forces, but he has instead presided over the institutionalization of anti-gay animus,” explains Janet Halley in her book Don’t: A Reader’s Guide to the Military’s Anti-Gay Policy. “Military commanders still ask service members whether they are gay, and soldiers have no legal protection when the question is put to them.”
The policy actually institutes more homophobic ideals then the previous one and endangers the careers of not only homosexuals but also heterosexuals because it does not cover when someone other than the gay party reports them as being gay. Halley depicts a scene for her readers.
“A woman turned down the heterosexual overture of a fellow service member. He thought that meant that she was a lesbian. She was put through the whole process. She didn’t have to have sex with another woman to get kicked out, she didn’t have to say she was gay, she just had to create in somebody’s mind the reasonable inference that she was gay.”
Now both gay men and women and straight men and women must fear that they will be “outted” because if they piss someone off, that person can report them as a possible homosexual and whether or not it’s true they are dragged through a long interrogation process.
First a cadet would be sent to the Military branch’s Office of Special Investigation, where an investigation is set underway to determine if that person has committed any homosexual acts. They are also probed for names of other possible homosexuals. Once under investigation the cadet (or cadets) is pulled from classes, if they are in an academy, or active duty immediately and separated from their peers. In most cases the cadet in placed in a facility for mental disorder and then sent to military court to have a conduct evaluation by anyone the military allows to be present. This sometimes includes family and friends who don’t know the cadet is or may be gay. Regardless of the outcome, this entire process is documented on the cadet’s personal file. After the trial it is decided whether or not the cadet is guilty and if so they are dismissed from service with an un-honorable or less than honorable discharge and sometimes punished with jail time because according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice “the act of using the sex organs in any other way than for penile-vaginal sex, is illegal.” If the cadet is found innocent they are put back into service, where they will most likely be tormented about the investigation until at least the end of their service time.
“They should have named it Permission to Lie,” explains Reichen Lehmkuhl whose memoir about life in the Air Force Academy, Here’s What We’ll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the United States Air Force tackles the topic of gay discrimination in the Military. “In the Air Force Honor Code we promise ‘We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does’ but that’s exactly what Don’t Ask, Don’t tell asked gay men and women to do.”
Furthermore Lehmkuhl believes that the policy challenges the integrity of the United States Armed Forces and might lead to a breakdown in the system or a less stable fighting force. “Any policy that inherently tells someone to lie will eventually break a person down…The policy will also, eventually break down the organization that sanctions it. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will eventually put a wedge between not only gay people and straight people serving side by side in the military because it fosters lies, it will eventually place gay people themselves against one another.”
So why does such a prestigious institution disallow a large percentage of Americans? Most people claim the ban is because homosexual military members might lead to sex between cadets. “I never once heard a male cadet argue that women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military because it might lead to sex nor have I heard the opposite,” Lehmkuhl argues. “Heavy sexual intimacy between two cadets or sex in the dorms was illegal and we all knew it. Still sex, and I of course mean heterosexual sex, was completely tolerated and overlooked.”
Halley believes the goal has to be unification in treatment of same-sex and cross-sex erotic activity. “I think that you want the least amount of regulation of sexuality you can have and still get your goals. The military has goals. It is a distinctive organization… So I don’t know what the right level of sexuality in the military is. But my push would be always [to] try to have less. If people want to have sex with each other and the work gets done, fine.”Another reason that people point to as why homosexuals cannot serve openly in the military is that it might make people who don’t like gay people uncomfortable which is bad for morale. Since when does America cater to discrimination? These arguments are the same as ones used for years to keep out racial minorities and women. However over time most military personnel have been trained to accept or, at least tolerate, racial and sexual integration and the contribution by these parties has been substantial. So is the time to integrate once more upon us? In one of the most publicized instances of the failures of Don’t ask Don’t tell, Army Private Barry Winchell was beaten to death with a baseball bat in his sleep by a fellow soldier on July 5, 1999. In the months leading up to his death Winchell was secretly dating male-to-female transgendered women, Calpernia Addams. (From the actual Uniform Code of Military Justice “A member of the armed forces shall be seperated from the armed forces if… he or she has engaged in a sexual act…with a person known to be of the same biological sex). After Winchell told his roomate Justin Fisher, rumors of the relationship began to spred. Winchell became the target of ongoing harassment, but he was afraid to report it out of fear that he would be perceived as homosexual. His story was made into a TV movie Soldier’s Girl in late May, 2003.
During his Presidential run in 2000 Al Gore, who had been Clinton’s Vice-President during the initial “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” decision, said, “In light of the Winchell case and other evidence, I believe the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy should be eliminated.”
He went on to say, that homosexuals should be allowed to serve their country without fear of discrimination, that he was in favor of an outright end to the ban on gays in the military during Clinton’s Presidency, and that if he were elected President, “I will make those changes and propose legislation in Congress to eliminate this unacceptable form of discrimination.” That day never arrived but perhaps the 2008 election will have better results. Hilary Clinton has on several occasions called for an end to the policy and even Former President Clinton is quoted as saying that don’t ask don’t tell had not been implemented as was intended, and that it was never supposed to facilitate rooting out people who are gay or allow for harassment. On November 22 2006, fourteen retired military leaders filed a brief urging the First Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a lower court ruling regarding the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban, in support of the plaintiffs in Cook v. Rumsfeld, a constitutional challenge to the law. Included in the signatures were Carolyn Becraft, the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence J. Korb.The brief argues, “The experience of numerous foreign militaries culturally similar to the United States uniformly demonstrates that the integration of openly gay service members has no adverse effect on cohesion. It is the law not the actions of the military’s many loyal, talented homosexual service members that undermines military capability.” It goes on to say that during former wars “the Armed Forces formally and informally implemented stop-loss policies that resulted in the retention of openly gay service members until the time of crisis had passed, undermining the military’s assertion that openly gay troops negatively impact unit cohesion or morale.” The brief finishes up by saying that the law “undermines the military’s ability to fulfill its primary mission of providing national security by discouraging the enlistment of gay persons qualified to serve their country and by expelling from the military those who have served with honor.”“This brief is an important milestone in the public debate about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ as senior military leaders are now publicly criticizing the ban,” said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Service-members Legal Defense Network. “In the past, courts have deferred to what they perceived as a policy preferred by military leaders to further military readiness. That has not been, and is not now, the case.” Things seem to slowly be changing as the American public begins to wake up to this huge injustice. With any luck, in ten years or so gay men and women will be able to serve freely in the military.
