In 1993, Gerald Garvey and John DiIulio, politics professors at Princeton, wrote an article in The New Republic, explaining that the reason for the ban was that, “by military cultural definition, a soldier can’t be gay and be a part of all that is best or most cherished in military life and lore.” To straights, letting gays serve would “change the meaning of who they are.”41 For those who viewed warriors as male conquerors, who penetrate women and enemy lines alike but never their own, gays could not be soldiers. Directing romantic love toward another man is tantamount to turning on your own, a form of treason. DiIulio, who went on to briefly run George W. Bush’s office of faith-based and community initiatives, opposed the ban from the start. But Garvey, at the time, supported it for cultural reasons, even though he believed there was no convincing evidence that lifting it would harm morale or cohesion.
But in 1998, Garvey backed away from his position. “My own thinking has become a little more complicated on this issue,” he said in an interview that year. His experience with a former student who felt obliged to resign from the air force because he was gay “brought me up very sharply” on the issue. Garvey was also moved by statistics he heard about the suicide rate among gay teens. “If this policy somehow contributes to an ambience which accounts for those statistics,” he said, “I think that’s a very powerful argument against the ban.”42
But it was the turn of the new century, spurred initially by the beating death of Barry Winchell, that saw the most rapid-fire change in attitudes toward gay service by key participants and observers. In December 1999, his presidency winding down, Bill Clinton told CBS News that the policy was not working and was “out of whack.” The remarks stopped short of indicting the policy in the first place, which he had signed into law six years earlier. But his line had always been that he tried to get more, and settled for “85 percent.” Now, he was focusing on its poor implementation, and promised a “reexamination of how this policy is implemented and whether we can do a better job of fulfilling its original intent.” The next year, he candidly acknowledged that what he “should have done is issued a clean executive order, let them overturn it and basically let them live with the consequences.” He said he “might have actually gotten a better result in the end, more like the one I wanted.” Three years later, on the tenth anniversary of his policy, Clinton fully broke with it. “Simply put,” he wrote in a letter to SLDN, “there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.” The former president explained that the nation had changed since 1993 and moved dramatically “toward recognizing the full citizenship of gay Americans.” His policy was unaffordable and “unfairly restricts the talent pool available to the military—and that diminishes our security.”43
In 2000, Charles Moskos cowrote an op-ed in The Washington Post calling the effects of his own policy “insidious.” Entitled “Suffering in Silence,” the piece shared a byline with Michelle Benecke, then codirector of SLDN. The two ideological foes had come together in the wake of the Pentagon’s 2000 report—itself prompted by the Winchell murder—showing widespread anti-gay harassment in the military. Their piece explained that troops who have been harassed and assaulted too often feel they cannot report the incidents, fearing investigation and discharge. Too many “gay and lesbian service members,” they wrote, “fear reporting harassment and assaults because many military doctors, psychologists, inspectors general, and law enforcement officials erroneously believe that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ requires them to turn in gay people who seek their help.” Significantly, the article said that “military members who reveal their sexual orientation during private medical treatment, or in the course of reporting harassment or assaults, are not ‘telling’ in a manner contemplated by ‘don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.’”44 Moskos, however, remained a defender of the policy itself; it was only the implementation and the poor enforcement that he denounced.
But the year 2000 was a banner year for changing opinion on gays in the military. Christopher Dandeker, head of the Department of War Studies and professor of military sociology at Kings College London, had favored the gay exclusion rule in both Britain and the United States as recently as 1999. That year, he wrote in the journal International Security that if soldiers were allowed to serve openly, “cohesion and military effectiveness would be negatively affected.” He called for deferring any change “until circumstances are more propitious.”45
But in 2000, the British military lifted its ban and gave Dandeker the opportunity to weigh its impact. “In light of evidence, argument and discussion,” he said at a conference in December 2000, he had been led to “revise” his position. “I think I underestimated the extent to which integration can proceed,” he said the next year. Today, he remains hesitant, wishing to see more research on cohesion in units with open gays before he’s ready to pronounce repeal an unqualified success. But Dandeker is one of a growing number of heavyweights whose views have evolved as study after study demonstrates the uselessness of banning gays from military service.46
Then there were the changes across the legal landscape. 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 and satisfy 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 in 2000, Sunstein reversed course on his legal analysis and argued that the courts should invalidate “don’t ask, don’t tell.” “I thought that then,” he said in a 2000 interview, referring back to 1993. “I’ve kind of changed my mind.” The gay ban in the United States, he came to believe, 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 said, “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.” Sunstein’s change of heart is a reminder of the organic interplay between the law and society. As we’ve seen in legal battles that rely on what constitutes a “rational basis” and a “reasonable person,” these important terms are always shifting as their cultural context evolves. The Lawrence decision three years later was only the latest example of this phenomenon, as it declared that U.S. laws and traditions now “show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.”47
The swell of changing opinions on gay service was not restricted to the academy. As the ban slogged on, even top members of the military grew unable to ignore its startling failure. In 2003, retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, who as judge advocate general of the navy had been responsible for enforcing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” called for the policy’s repeal. In an article in The National Law Journal, Hutson called the gay ban “odious” and “virtually unworkable in the military.” The article argued that the policy was the “quintessential example of a bad compromise,” and that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” regulations are a “charade” that “demeans the military as an honorable institution.”48
As JAG, Hutson was the senior uniformed attorney in the navy. His job was to oversee all legal issues, supervise the 750 lawyers in the JAG Corps who serve around the world, and provide legal counsel to top commanders, including the secretary of the navy. He never liked the policy, but he supported it as a practical measure, concluding that “a satisfactory resolution was impossible then.”49
But despite genuine concerns that “the sky could fall” if the ban were lifted, Hutson now believes things are different. “That was then and this is now,” he said in recent interviews. “I am now convinced, as I was not then, that the military could surv
ive” lifting the ban. The unit cohesion argument, said Hutson, has now been “completely reversed.” Telling military members that they can’t deal with open gays, that they’re not mature enough or well disciplined enough, “is divisive.” Ending discrimination “will enhance rather than detract from unit cohesion. . . . It will make us a stronger force rather than a less strong force, and it’s a good thing for the country.” In addition, it would remove a “blemish” on the armed forces and increase the public’s regard for the military. Hutson’s biggest fear is that the military he loves is “falling further and further behind” the American public. “This is what’s discouraging to me,” he said. “I don’t want an institution for which I have great affection to be antiquated in its ideas. The military is better than that.”50
Hutson’s support for ending the ban was pegged largely to broader changes in American culture. But does this mean the ban was the right thing to do in 1993? “I think we could have made it work” even then, said Hutson about lifting the ban entirely. “We probably were not giving enlisted men and women enough credit. They probably would have handled it better than we thought they would.” The concern that an influx of gays would cause good straight soldiers to flee turned out to be “completely bogus,” he said. And even by 2000, “things had changed so considerably, that I think 18- and 19- and 20-year-olds were just laughing at us because we didn’t understand what they were thinking. Young people had so dramatically opened up to the idea of working alongside openly gay people that us crusty old farts protecting them was just a joke.”51
In 2007, Hutson drafted an op-ed summarizing his feelings about his own involvement in the shaping of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” “While we did our best,” he wrote about the efforts of the navy in 1993, “what we came up with was not good enough. Blaming the supposed intolerance of young recruits for a policy of continued intolerance toward patriotic gay Americans was a moral passing of the buck.” Hutson concluded that “while our fears of damage to cohesion, morale and recruitment were genuine, we failed to exercise the leadership that, with some difficulty, could nevertheless have guided the military through this necessary change.”52
In recent years, even the Pentagon itself has stopped trying to defend the gay ban, instead simply punting questions about it to Congress. Spokespeople deflected press inquiries by saying, “The Department of Defense policy on homosexual conduct in the military implements a federal law enacted in 1993 after extensive hearings and debate. The law would need to be changed to affect the Department’s policy. We are complying with this statute.” It almost sounded as if they were waiting for Congress to repeal the law and end the vice on the military. In 2007, Stephen Herbits, a gay civilian Pentagon insider and close aide to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, said that both Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were against the gay ban. “Both of them would change it in a second if the president changed his mind,” Herbits said in an interview that year. “It would be gone in a second—I know that.”53
Slowly but surely, the reality of the gay ban, and its harmful, unnecessary consequences, have crept up the military chain of command. In January 2007, retired general John Shalikashvili, who succeeded Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The highest-ranking uniformed officer in the nation, Shalikashvili was the most senior general to call for repeal. In 1993, he had supported the compromise as “a useful speed bump that allowed temperatures to cool for a period of time while the culture continued to evolve.” But in 2007 he said it was crucial to “consider the evidence that has emerged over the last 14 years.”54
What changed his mind? Shalikashvili held several meetings in 2006 with service members, including ones with combat experience in Iraq. He wrote that the conversations showed him “just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.” The general called for political caution on changing the policy, mentioning that finding a workable direction on the Iraq War was the first priority. But ultimately, he suggested, a sound national defense required “welcom[ing] the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.” An end to the ban, he wrote, was inevitable. “When that day comes, gay men and lesbians will no longer have to conceal who they are, and the military will no longer need to sacrifice those whose service it cannot afford to lose.”55
In April 2007, Admiral William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, had a private conversation with Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center. Crowe had counseled Clinton strongly against lifting the ban in 1992 but has since changed his view. He told Belkin he knew many good gay sailors, that he had long believed the policy was based more on “emotionalism than fact,” and that he thought it was time for the policy to end.56
Among the data Shalikashvili cited in his op-ed was a 2006 Zogby poll of 545 troops who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. It found that 72 percent of service members were personally comfortable interacting with gays and lesbians, a key finding, given that the main rationale of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was that straights would not accept serving with gays. In 1993, just 16 percent of male troops supported letting gays and lesbians serve. One survey from that year found that 97 percent of generals and admirals opposed lifting the ban. But it turns out that this animus toward gay service would never again be as widespread as it was at the dawn of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Between 1992 and 1998, the percentage of male soldiers who “strongly oppose” gays serving in uniform dropped nearly in half, from 67 to 37 percent. The percentage of army women opposed to gay troops fell from 32 to 16 percent. The trend was not limited to enlisted personnel. A 2000 study conducted at the Naval Postgraduate School found that between 1994 and 1999, the percentage of U.S. Navy officers who “feel uncomfortable in the presence of homosexuals” decreased from 57.8 to 36.4 percent.57
By 2006, a tipping point had been reached. The Zogby poll was illuminating on this front in a number of ways. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents said they would have joined the military regardless of whether known gays were serving. Nearly half the respondents reported that they suspected there were gays in their unit, and even more important, that their presence was well known by others. Nearly a quarter said they knew for sure there were gays in their unit. Tellingly, of those who knew of gays in their unit, the overwhelming majority stated that their presence had little or no impact on the unit’s morale; those who were not aware of gays in their midst registered a stronger belief that such a presence would—hypothetically, of course—have a negative impact on morale. In other words, consistent with countless other polls, familiarity breeds acceptance—and this repeated demonstration of the capacity for humans to evolve in their beliefs makes the ban on openly gay service even more odious, since by its very nature it blocks the possibility for learning more about different kinds of people. Even more important, these findings show that those who remain ignorant of (or in denial about) the gays in their midst cling to the mistaken belief that their presence would undermine morale and cohesion: The problem, as I have pointed out already, is not the actual reality of gays in the military, but rather the fear of gays in the military. Within the military, those serving less than four years, along with veterans already out of the service, were more likely to support the inclusion of open gay troops, while officers and those serving more than fifteen years were less likely. These figures strongly suggest that military culture itself encourages toeing the line that gays must not be allowed to serve.
Polling did not show unanimous or even majority support from within the military for openly gay service. The Zogby poll found that more service members strongly opposed letting open gays serve than strongly supported it, 21 percent to 9 percent, though the largest category was “neutral,” at 32 percent. And in a 2008 Foreign Policy poll of 3,400 senior and retired officers, a majority said the military was weaker than it was five yea
rs ago, when the United States invaded Iraq. Yet only 22 percent thought that the gay ban should be lifted as a way to help fill recruiting shortfalls. The large majority of officers favored instead letting in high school dropouts and noncitizens.58
But the per sistence of opposition to gay service on opinion polls raises, well, thorny questions. As we’ve seen, research and reality both upend the assumption that anti-gay sentiment, as registered in opinion polls, has any bearing on what actually happens when a sound policy of equal treatment is put into place and properly enforced. We only need to look at the militaries of Britain, Canada, and others, where fierce resistance to gay service melted away when they lifted their bans. Equally important is the ethical question of 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? Should the question of what is the right or wrong thing to do rely on opinion polls? As Hutson pointed out, part of the calculus was necessarily the practical question of whether widespread opposition to gay service could be overcome. But determining what is true opposition and what its impact would be is nearly impossible, since sometimes good people choose the safety of the practical option over the rectitude of the moral one. All the evidence we do have shows there is no cause for alarm—the practical and moral option are one and the same.
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