After considerable debate, and fierce opposition from social conservatives on both sides of the House over the years, the United States Congress finally voted on December 18th, 2010 to repeal the ban against openly gay and lesbian individuals serving in the American military.
The Senate voted 65-31 in favour of lifting the ban, which came into effect in 1993 under Bill Clinton, often seen as a supporter of gay rights.
The "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT) policy was introduced as a compromise measure by President Clinton who had campaigned on the promise to allow all citizens to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation. Prior to DADT it was the position of the US military, under Department of Defence Directive 1332.14 (10 U.S.C. § 654) that homosexuality was incompatible with military service. Persons who engaged in homosexual acts or stated that they were homosexual or bisexual were discharged, with many being court-martialled and then dishonourably discharged for being in violation of The Uniform Code of Military Justice passed by Congress in 1950 during the Truman Administration.
Under this directive, military authorities often sought out homosexual personnel, interrogating suspected homosexuals or those suspected of engaging in, or found to have engaged in, same-sex sexual activity, in an attempt to purge the military of the "corrosive" effect of homosexuality. Clinton’s DADT was viewed by many as a more liberal and humane alternative to the decades of witch-hunts that preceded it.
The essence of the policy, known at the time as "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue," was to forbid military authorities asking about or forcing individuals to reveal their sexual orientation. A "Don’t Harass" provision was later added, thereby disallowing any harassment or violence against any service member for any reason, including sexual orientation or assumed sexual orientation.
Conduct Unbecoming: Lesbians and Gays in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf War, by Randy Shilts, author of the seminal book on the history of AIDS in America,
And the Band Played On, examined in considerable detail the emotional and even financial costs to gay, lesbian, and bisexual service personnel that the then existing policy wreaked on them. Shilts’ exposé of the tactics used by the different investigative services (Army, Navy, United States Marine Corp, National Guard, Coast Guard, and Air Force) was chilling. Instances of suspected homosexuals being placed under surveillance day and night, interception of mail, wiretaps, approaching friends, neighbours and family members to question them about the suspect’s sexual practices, and entrapment whereby an undercover officer would attempt to seduce or proposition a suspect and then charge him or her if they responded to the advances, were commonplace and accepted tactics. Once under interrogation, which could last for hours or even days, bribes, false promises of leniency, and coercion would be used to get the suspect to inform on others.
Despite studies, such as the 1957 Crittenden Report, which indicated openly gay and lesbian service members posed no risk to military operations or security, the anti-homosexual policy remained in effect for decades.
In 1981, the Defense Department issued a new regulation on homosexuality designed to withstand a court challenge by developing uniform and clearly defined regulations and justifications that made homosexual status (whether self-applied or by the military) and conduct, grounds for discharge under DOD Directive 1332.14 (Enlisted Administrative Separations). It stated:
Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among service members; to ensure the integrity of the system of rank and command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of service members who frequently must live and work in close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the armed forces; to maintain the public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.
This, then, was the climate under which DADT came into being.
Originally, Clinton had hoped to repeal the existing ban on GLB personnel, whether openly homosexual or closeted, but due to an intense campaign headed by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia who was in favour of retaining the full ban; despite the work of openly-gay Democratic Congressman Barry Franks of Massachusetts who favoured modification but ultimately voted in favour of the ban; and retired Republican Senator Barry Goldwater; and after Congressional phone lines were flooded by organized anti-gay opposition, Clinton backed off his campaign promise to repeal the ban in favor of the DADT compromise.
Since the implementation of DADT more than 13,500 men and women have been discharged - kicked out - from the military despite an official policy that prohibited asking any serving member what his or her sexual orientation was. Prior to that, under the old Uniform Code provisions, hundreds of thousands of serving personnel are believed to have been discharged or forced to resign.
Clearly, there has been a huge toll on the well-being of those forced to resign or who have been discharged for being, or suspected of being, homosexual or bisexual; the personal cost of such a policy is almost impossible to calculate. However, the United States’ Government Accountability Office released its estimates on the financial cost in 2005. It reported at least $95.4 million in recruiting costs was lost and another $95.1 million for training replacements of those discharged was incurred.
The following year a Blue Ribbon Commission at the University of California which included former Assistant Defence Secretaries Lawrence Korb and William Perry (Reagan and Clinton Administrations respectively) and professors from West Point Military Academy, concluded the figures should be closer to $363 million, including $14.3 million for "separation travel" following a service member’s discharge, $17.8 million for officer training, $252.4 million for training enlistees and $79.3 million in recruiting costs. That comes to a whopping $726.8 million dollars, or over three quarters of a billion dollars, and that doesn’t even include the value of lost expertise or intangibles like the effect of losing a member fluent in Arabic and English while the United States is engaged in "action" in Arabic-speaking territories.
With the repeal, the US military joins Canada and most other NATO forces in allowing openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual personnel to serve in the American military. However, the process is not over.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates and other supporters of the repeal have argued that Congress, rather than the courts, needed to act if the military was to have time for an "orderly transition" to the new policy and that any court-ordered end to the policy would be "disruptive."
Once the bill is signed by President Obama into law, which is thought at the time of writing to be within a week of the Congressional vote, the Pentagon will have an undetermined amount of time - possibly months - to educate service members and to prepare for the policy change throughout the military hierarchy before it is ready to certify the new policy. Once that certification is enacted, there will be another 60-day period before the new policy takes effect, during which time DADT remains in effect and any personnel found to be homosexual can still be discharged from the military.
Obama had also campaigned on a promise to repeal DADT, although he came under criticism by liberal and gay rights groups for failing to push hard enough to end DADT. Obama, in several media interviews and town hall meetings, repeatedly stressed that DADT could not be repealed by Executive Order (a directive from the President) and that he, as President of the United States, had to permit due process to occur.
That process, in the latest round, was not without controversy and drama. In September and early December of 2010, Democrats had failed to bring about repeal because they lacked the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster. However, several moderate Republicans, including Senators Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, withdrew their opposition after the release in early December of a Pentagon study endorsing the policy chang following a Defense Department survey of military personnel on bases throughout the United States and overseas. This study included 400,000 service members and 150,000 military spouses, 70 per cent of which said homosexuals serving in the military would not negatively affect unit cohesion or harm the war efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq. Interestingly, though, 40 to 60 percent of personnel in the Marine Corps and combat specialties said that repealing the ban would be negative.
A 2006 poll of military members found that 26 percent were in favor of gays serving in the military, 37 percent were opposed, while 37 percent expressed no preference or were unsure. Of the respondents who had experience with gays in their unit, six percent said their presence had a positive impact on their personal morale, 66 percent said no impact, and 28 percent said negative impact.
Regarding overall unit morale, three percent reported having lesbians and gay men in their unit as a positive impact, 64 percent stated there was no impact on unit morale, and 27 percent claimed it created a negative impact. As for respondents uncertain whether they had served with gay personnel, two percent thought gays would have a positive effect on personal morale, while 29 percent thought that they would have no impact and 48 percent thought that they would have a negative effect. 73 percent of respondents said that they felt comfortable in the presence of gay and lesbian personnel.
It is generally assumed those higher up in the hierarchy were opposed to the inclusion of openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual military personnel or were, in fact, outright homophobic. While that is doubtlessly true given the overall culture of the military, nevertheless in December 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals urged Congress to repeal the policy, citing evidence that 65,000 gay men and women are currently serving in the armed forces and that there are over 1,000,000 estimated lesbian and gay veterans. On November 17, 2008, 104 retired generals and admirals signed a similar statement.
Certainly the Canadian experience is indicative of the minimal effect that having openly homosexual or bisexual personnel has on unit cohesiveness and effectiveness. The Canadian Armed Forces has had a policy of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for a number of years and all the dire warnings of those opposed to such inclusion have failed to materialize. Basically, whatever one’s personal views on homosexuality may be, what it comes down to for your average soldier, sailor or airman/woman is, so long as you do your job, back your compatriots, and "soldier on", nobody gives a rat’s ass who you have sex with.
The fear that hordes of hardcore feminist dykes and raving queer boys would take over the military have likewise come to naught. It is a very specific personality type that is attracted to the military and that personality type spans sexual orientation. I grew up Army and those who stuck with it, regardless of who they had sex with or the type of sex they enjoyed, had more in common with each other than they did with "civvies." The military is very much a world unto its own, with its own codes, its own way of doing things, and its own way of seeing things; and those who are in the military share that. If they don’t, regardless of orientation issues, they don’t last long and usually opt out themselves. For those who stay in, their time in the military is one of the major lynchpins of their lives; it defined who they were and who they are like no other career or job can. Being in the Armed Forces is truly a way of life - a ‘lifestyle’ if you will - and if one is also lesbian, gay or bisexual, that in no way minimizes or compromises that way of life. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell did. That it is now at long last repealed, heralds a new day and new hope.
As President Obama said, "...by ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, no longer will [the American] nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay...and no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love."