In the wake of dozens of heterosexual assault charges against top military captains and sergeants, lame worries about gays working in the military now pale, becoming, in fact, a bad joke. Newspaper headlines across the nation currently portray a stunned Pentagon establishment facing hetero-sex abuses against women by leading military superiors.

Five years ago, the Navy was much scandalized by what is now called "the Tailhook incident." Scores of Navy brass were accused of drunken, unwelcome sexual assaults on enlisted women attending a hotel convention. The latest sex abuse charges have, once again, been made by women forced into unwanted sex by male Army superiors.

One outstanding incident involves a 22-year Army veteran who accuses her one-time boss, the Army's top-ranking enlisted man, Sergeant Major Gene C. McKinney, of sexually assaulting her in her hotel room last April during a business trip. Sergeant Major Brenda L. Hoster also charges that a senior Army official attempted to conceal this assault. The significance of her charge becomes especially relevant because the man accused-- Sgt. Maj. McKinney--- is on the military panel that is reviewing hosts of other heterosex-abuse accusations.

Overcoming initial fears that no one would believe her, Sgt. Maj. Hoster waited seven weeks and then took her complaint to Pentagon officials. Those officials ignored her request for a transfer and took no action against the offending officer. Sgt. Maj. Hoster said she was left with no option but to retire early. Reluctantly, she said, she agreed "for the good of the Army" to leave quietly.

But when her reputed assailant, McKinney, was appointed to a senior panel of the commission reviewing sexual harassment policies, Sgt. Maj. Hoster could no longer remain silent. The offending McKinney grabbed and kissed her, she says, asking for sex even while his own wife waited for him another hotel room only a few doors distant. "It wasn't right," Sgt. Maj. Hoster told reporters, "He doesn't have any business being on that panel."

The Marine Corps (57%) and the Navy (61%) presently enjoy the most confidence among servicewomen for their efforts made to curtail hetero-sexual assaults. The Army's servicewomen expressing such confidence (47%) about such efforts, ranks lowest. Air Force servicewomen are 51% confident that their superiors want a stop to such harassment.

The greatest number of charges are now a national scandal for Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground where fifty servicewomen have come forward, alleging 26 rapes, forced oral sodomy, battery, buttocks grabbing, hair pulling and threats from ten male superiors.