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Gay Ban Change Views |
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Compiled By GayToday
In light of mounting new evidence suggesting that lifting a gay ban does not undermine combat performance, numerous scholars now say they oppose the ban entirely, or believe it could be eliminated without harming the military. Among the scholars who initially favored a ban on openly gay soldiers in the U.S. was Christopher Dandeker, Head of the Department of War Studies and Professor of Military Sociology at Kings College London. As recently as 1999, Dandeker wrote in the journal, International Security, that by allowing soldiers to serve openly, "cohesion and military effectiveness would be negatively affected." He called for deferring the open integration of gays in the services "until circumstances are more propitious." But in comments offered this winter at the Commonwealth Club of California, Dandeker stated that after the British military successfully lifted its gay ban, his thinking had shifted "in the light of evidence and argument and discussion." In follow-up conversations, he said, "I think I underestimated the extent to which integration can proceed," though he added that he remained cautious about how quickly the process could proceed in the U.S. Some people who long believed lifting the gay ban would disrupt the military recently changed their thinking. Laura Miller, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCLA who has conducted research on the opinions of military personnel, had expressed concern that there might be significant disruptions if the ban were lifted.
Snider suggested that the ban could be lifted so long as a strict set of regulations accompanied the change. The new rules must prohibit any fraternizing or public displays of affection among gay and straight soldiers while in uniform. Feaver found Snider's plan "an intriguing and plausible argument, more plausible than others I have heard," but he added he would like to see the idea thoroughly debated. "I'd be open to evidence," he says, "that persuasively shows that the costs are less than what I thought they'd be." Cass Sunstein, the noted Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, testified before Congress in 1993 about the legal viability of the Clinton compromise. Though personally opposed to the ban, Sunstein believed at that time that it would pass constitutional muster, satisfying the courts as a "rational" policy serving a "legitimate government interest." He counseled judicial restraint, saying, "I think the ideal is for this question to be resolved politically rather than judicially." But Sunstein has since reversed course on his legal analysis, and he no longer thinks the courts should validate "don't ask, don't tell." "I thought that then," he says. "I've kind of changed my mind." The gay ban in the U.S., he now believes, has been so ineffective and is so unnecessary as to warrant a legally "adventuresome" approach. "This policy has been so disastrous in its effects," he told researchers, "and the experience of other nations is so articulate about the ability of fair-minded people to run a military that is not discriminatory, that I guess if the courts struck this down, you should gulp a bit, but smile." In fact, early supporters of the ban on gay troops have been backing away from the military's discriminatory policy for years. Lawrence Korb, who served as assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, was responsible for implementing the directive that required gays to be discharged. But in 1994, Korb, then a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, wrote a very personal essay in which he explained a radical change of heart. Appalled that his policy had led to "an unprecedented era of witch-hunts to flush out these 'undesirables,'" he described how "over the past decade, my own views on this subject have changed considerably and I now feel that the nation and the military would be best served by dropping the ban entirely." Korb was particularly disturbed by the Pentagon's efforts to conceal findings from a study it commissioned to determine whether gays were a security risk. The study concluded not only that gays were not a security risk, but that they were entirely suitable for military service. “But the Pentagon labeled the study a "draft" so it would not have to be released to the public, and it ordered a new study which would omit the objectionable findings. The incident, wrote Korb, "provided compelling, empirical evidence that there was no good reason to exclude gays and lesbians." Even the chief academic architect of "don't ask, don't tell," Northwestern University military sociologist Charles Moskos, recently co-wrote a piece in the Washington Post criticizing the "insidious" effects of his own policy. Entitled "Suffering in Silence," the piece explained that soldiers who have been harassed and assaulted frequently feel they cannot report the incidents for fear of being targeted for investigation and possibly expelled. In at least one case, the constant abuse of a soldier who was perceived to be gay escalated into his fatal assault, a death that might have been averted had he felt free to report his perpetrators to authorities. Moskos has even distanced himself from the central rationale behind "don't ask, don't tell": the alleged threat of gays and lesbians to unit cohesion. In a Fall, 2000 interview with Lingua Franca magazine he dismissed the importance of unit cohesion, saying "I don't care about that; I'm just against requiring gays to live with straights." Although Moskos continues to believe that allowing gays to serve openly would compromise heterosexual privacy in the showers, his recent remarks seem to indicate a softening in his earlier belief that lifting the ban would jeopardize unit cohesion. |
Several military and academic figures
who were influential in the debate leading to the current ban on openly
gay soldiers in the U.S. military recently reversed or softened their
position on the matter.
