Unfriendly Fire

by Dr. Nathaniel Frank

  16. Carson Eoyang, “Memorandum for the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Policy),” January 30, 1989; Frisby, “Military Seeks Third Study”; Frisby, “Military Seeks Third Study.”

  17. Randy Shilts, “Pentagon Memo Urged Reversing Ban on Gays in Military,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 25, 1991.

  18. “Defense Force Management: DOD’s Policy on Homosexuality,” U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), June 12, 1992, http://archive.gao.gov/d33t10/146980.pdf (accessed March 8, 2008).

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Author interview with Lawrence Korb, June 15, 2000.

  22. Lawrence Korb, “Evolving Perspectives on the Military’s Policy on Homosexuals: A Personal Note,” in Wilbur Scott and Sandra Carson Stanley, eds., Gays and Lesbians in the Military: Issues, Concerns, and Contrasts (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994), 220–21; U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Directive No. 1332.14, Enlisted Administrative Separations, January 28, 1982.

  23. Author interview with John Hutson, February 19, 2008; “Defeating ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ ” panel discussion, Yale Law School, October 5, 2006.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Rand, Sexual Orientation, 210; Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 430.

  28. Dronenburg v. Zech, 241 U.S. App. D.C. 262 (U.S. App. 1984); Steffan v. Cheney, 780 F. Supp. 1 (U.S. Dist. 1991).

  29. Melissa Wells-Petry, Exclusion: Homosexuals and the Right to Serve (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1993), 90–91; Marc Wolinsky and Kenneth Sherrill, eds., Gays and the Military: Joseph Steffan Versus the United States (Princeton University Press, 1993).

  30. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).

  31. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 9; Eric Schmitt, “Military Cites Wide Range of Reasons for Its Gay Ban,” New York Times, January 27, 1993.

  32. “Women in Combat: Hearing of the Manpower and Personnel Subcommittee, Senate Armed Services Committee,” Federal News Service, June 18, 1991.

  33. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 428; Charles Moskos, “The Folly of Comparing Race and Gender in the Army,” Washington Post, January 4, 1998.

  34. “DOD’s Policy on Homosexuality.”

  35. Laura L. Miller, “Fighting for a Just Cause: Soldiers’ Views on Gays in the Military,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military, 70; Steve Berg, “Is Military Service a Right or Privilege,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 18, 1993; the research was conducted by the private group American Security Council Foundation, which opposed gay service.

  36. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 594–97; Bob Zelnick, “ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Flawed from the Start,” Boston Globe, January 3, 2000.

  37. Joyce Price, “GOP Vows to Fight Clinton Plan to End Gay Ban,” Washington Times, July 18, 1993; House Committee on Armed Services, Policy Implications of Lifting the Ban, 1993.

  38. Lambda Report, no. 2, June and July 1993; “DOD’s Policy on Homosexuality.”

  39. “DOD’s Policy on Homosexuality.”

  40. Author interview with Judith Stiehm, March 23, 2000; author interview with Aaron Belkin, March 28, 2000.

  41. Charles Moskos, “From Citizens’ Army to Social Laboratory,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military, 53–65; American Sociological Association, Footnotes (newsletter), 1997; e-mail from Chuck Loebbaka to author, February 20, 2008; The Connection, National Public Radio, December 20, 1999.

  42. Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II,” Public Opinion Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1948): 280–315.

  43. See, for example, Charles Moskos, The American Enlisted Man: The Rank and File in Today’s Military (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1970), 146; John Downey, Management in the Armed Forces: An Anatomy of the Military Profession (London: McGraw-Hill, 1977), 196.

  44. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Summary Report of the Military Working Group, July 1, 1993; Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 708.

  45. Robin Williams, “The American Soldier: An Assessment, Several Wars Later,” Public Opinion Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1989): 165; Omer Bartov, “Daily Life and Motivation in War: The Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union,” Journal of Strategic Studies 12 (1989): 200–14; James Griffith, “Measurement of Group Cohesion in U.S. Army Units,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 9, no. 2 (1988): 149–71; Guy Siebold and Dennis Kelly, Development of the Combat Platoon Cohesion Questionnaire (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988); Brian Mullen and Carolyn Copper, “The Relation Between Group Cohesiveness and Performance: An Integration,” Psychological Bulletin 115, no. 2 (1994): 210–27; Robert MacCoun, “What Is Known About Unit Cohesion and Military Performance,” in National Defense Research Institute, Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy, 283–331; Elizabeth Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness,” International Security 23, no. 2 (1998): 5–39; Robert MacCoun, Elizabeth Kier, and Aaron Belkin, “Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat? An Old Question with an Old Answer,” Armed Forces and Society 32, no. 4 (2006): 646–54.

  46. Author interviews with Moskos.

  47. Mullen and Copper, “The Relation Between Group Cohesiveness and Performance,” 210–27; MacCoun, “What Is Known About Unit Cohesion,” 293; Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military,” 17; Judith Hicks Stiehm, “Managing the Military’s Homosexual Exclusion Policy: Text and Subtext,” University of Miami Law Review 46 (1992): 693.

  48. Robert MacCoun, “Sexual Orientation and Military Cohesion: A Critical Review of the Evidence,” in Gregory Herek, Jared Jobe, Ralph Carney, eds., Out in Force: Sexual Orientation and the Military (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 160.

  49. For more on comradeship and friendship in the military, see, for example, Sarah Cole, “ ‘My Killed Friends Are with Me Where I Go’: Friendship and Comradeship at War,” in Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 138–84; and Desiree Verweij, “Comrades or Friends? On Friendship in the Armed Forces,” Journal of Military Ethics 6, no. 4 (2007): 280–91. Also, John Muirhead, Those Who Fall (New York: Random House, 1986), 6; Phyllis Moen, Donna Dempster-McClain, and Henry Walker, eds., A Nation Divided: Diversity, Inequality, and Community in American Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1999), 210.

  50. For more on the inverse correlation between social cohesion and combat performance, see, for example, Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military,” 15–18.

  51. James Kahan, Noreen Webb, Richard Shavelson, and Ross Stolzenberg, Individual Characteristics and Unit Performance: A Review of Research and Methods (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, R-3194-MIL, 1985), 81; Department of Military Psychiatry, Evaluating the Unit Manning System: Lessons Learned to Date (Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1987), 1; Faris Kirkland and Linette Sparzcino, eds., Unit Manning System Field Evaluation: Technical Report No. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1987), 2; Department of Military Psychiatry, “Unit Reconstitution in a Wartime Scenario,” in David Marlow, ed., Unit Manning System Field Evaluation: Technical Report No. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1986), 57.

  52. Author interviews with Moskos.

  53. Shils and Janowitz, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht,” 286; Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military,” 15; Nora Kinzer Stewart, Mates and Muchachos: Unit Cohesion in the Falklands/Malvinas War (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1991), 18.

  54. William Claire Menninger, Psychiatry in a Troubled World: Yesterday’s War and Today’s Challenge (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 224; Catherine Manegold, “The Odd Place o
f Homosexuality in the Military,” New York Times, April 19, 1993; Allen Frantzen, Before the Closet: Same-sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 297–98; Allan Bérubé, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 38, 188.

  55. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 354–65, 446–53.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid.; author interviews with Moskos.

  59. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 446–48.

  60. Ibid., 450.

  6. GAYS IN FOREIGN MILITARIES

  1. Aaron Belkin and Jason McNichol, “Effects of the 1992 Lifting of Restrictions on Gay and Lesbian Service in the Canadian Forces: Appraising the Evidence,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Aaron Belkin and Jason McNichol, “The Effects of Including Gay and Lesbian Soldiers in the Australian Defence Forces: Appraising the Evidence,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Aaron Belkin and Melissa Levitt, “Homosexuality and the Israel Defense Forces: Did Lifting the Gay Ban Undermine Military Performance?” Armed Forces and Society 27, no. 4 (2001): 541–65.

  7. Jay Bushinsky, “Gays in Israeli Military Take U.S. Cue,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 8, 1993; Dan Izenberg, “Gays Speak Out for Equality at Knesset Meeting,” Jerusalem Post, February 3, 1993.

  8. Ethan Bronner, “Israeli Army Move to End Gay Bias Hailed,” Boston Globe, June 12, 1993.

  9. Reuven Gal, “Gays in the Military: Policy and Practice in the Israeli Defence Forces,” in Wilbur Scott and Sandra Carson Stanley, eds., Gays and Lesbians in the Military: Issues, Concerns, and Contrasts (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994), 182–83; Emily Bazelon, “Gay Soldiers Leave Their Uniforms in the Closet,” Jerusalem Post, March 16, 1994.

  10. Bazelon, “Gay Soldiers Leave Their Uniforms.”

  11. Bronner, “Israeli Army Move to End Gay Bias Hailed.”

  12. “Homosexuals in the Military: Policies and Practices of Foreign Countries,” U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), June 1993; for more on mandatory service in Israel, see Amia Lieblich, Transition to Adulthood During Military Service: The Israeli Case (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).

  13. Aaron Belkin and R. L. Evans, “The Effects of Including Gay and Lesbian Soldiers in the British Armed Forces: Appraising the Evidence,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000.

  14. Sue Leeman, “European Court Ruling Reopens British Debate on Gays in Forces,” Associated Press, September 27, 1999; Helen Branswell, “U.K.’s Ban on Gays in Army Discriminatory,” Toronto Star, September 28, 1999.

  15. Edmund Hall, We Can’t Even March Straight: Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces (London: Vintage, 1995).

  16. Edmund Hall, “Gay Ban Is Based on Bias Alone,” Independent, March 5, 1996.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Sarah Lyall, “European Court Tells British to Let Gay Soldiers Serve,” New York Times, September 28, 1999; Sue Leeman, “European Court Ruling.”

  19. “Britain to Act After Ruling on Gays in Military,” Irish Times, September 28, 1999; Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces.”

  20. 2000 Ministry of Defence Report, quoted in Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces”; Ministry of Defence, quoted in Aaron Belkin, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?” Parameters (Summer 2003): 111.

  21. Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces.”

  22. Ibid.

  23. Belkin and McNichol, “Canadian Forces.”

  24. National Defense Research Institute, Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessments (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1993); Belkin and McNichol, “Canadian Forces,” 2000; F. C. Pinch, “Perspectives on Organizational Change in the Canadian Forces,” U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Alexandria, VA, 1994.

  25. “Policies and Practices of Foreign Countries”; Belkin and McNichol, “Australian Defence Forces,” citing United Kingdom Ministry of Defence; see also Belkin and Levitt, “Israel Defense Forces.”

  26. Belkin, “Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?”

  27. Sean Rayment, “Air Force Enlists Stonewall in Drive for Gay Recruits,” Sunday Telegraph, December 31, 2006.

  28. Ask Not, directed by Johnny Symons (Oakland, CA: Persistent Visions, 2008); citation is to an early version of the film, viewed on February 15, 2008.

  29. Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces.” Reports also suggested a decrease in harassment as a result of the Lifting of the gay ban.

  30. Edmund Hall, quoted in Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces.”

  31. Author interview with Robb Nunn, May 11, 2007.

  32. Belkin and McNichol, “Canadian Forces.”

  33. Belkin and McNichol, “Australian Defence Forces”; Renshaw, quoted in Belkin and McNichol, “Australian Defence Forces.”

  34. Stuht, quoted in Belkin and McNichol, “Australian Defence Forces.”

  35. Belkin and McNichol, “Australian Defence Forces.”

  36. The O’Reilly Factor, FNC, June 18, 2003.

  37. Laura Rehrmann, “Retired Colonel Says Military Men Will Never Accept Gays,” Associated Press, April 1, 1993.

  38. Belkin and Evans, “British Armed Forces”; Rand, Sexual Orientation, 74; David Segal, Paul Gade, and Edgar Johnson, “Social Science Research on Homosexuals in the Military,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military, 33–51.

  39. Geoffrey Bateman, “Is the U.S. Military Unique? ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and the (Ir)relevance of Foreign Military Experiences,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005.

  40. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 399– 400.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid., 349–52.

  43. Chris Reidy, “Just Saying No,” Boston Globe, January 31, 1993.

  44. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Policy Concerning Homosexuality, 1993, 349–52; Charles Moskos, “From Citizens’ Army to Social Laboratory,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military; World Affairs Council Weekly Broadcast, NPR, May 1, 2000; The Connection, NPR, December 20, 1999.

  45. Gal, “Gays in the Military,” 181–89.

  46. Belkin and Levitt, “Israel Defense Forces,” 2001; Belkin, “Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?”

  47. Belkin and Levitt, “Israel Defense Forces,” 2001; Belkin, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Parameters (Summer 2003).

  48. Gal, “Gays in the Military,” 181–89.

  49. Geoffrey Bateman and Sameera Dalvi, “Multinational Military Units and Homosexual Personnel,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2004.

  50. Nile Gardiner, “Great Britain and the International Coalition in Iraq,” Heritage Foundation, June 6, 2007, http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/hl1028.cfm (accessed January 6, 2008); Ivo H. Daalder, “The Coalition That Isn’t,” Brookings Institution, March 24, 2003, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2003/0324iraq_daalder.aspx (accessed January 6, 2008).

  51. Jason Straziuso, “Heat Becomes Enemy in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, June 23, 2006; Matthew Pennington, “NATO Gears Up for Mission in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, July 29, 2006; “More Dutch Troops for Afghanistan,” BBC News, February 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4673026.stm (accessed January 6, 2008); “Australia Outlines Afghan Force,” BBC News, May 8, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4983540.stm (accessed January 6, 2008).

  52. Straziuso, “Heat Becomes Enemy”; Pennington, “NATO Gears Up”; Resource News International, “Canada at a Glance,” November 16, 2000; Jim Garamone, “NA
TO Commander Says Troops Proved Toughness over Summer,” American Forces Press Service, October 17, 2006, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=1652 (accessed April 30, 2008).

  53. Bateman and Dalvi, “Multinational Military Units,” 2004; Charles Moskos, John Allen Williams, and David Segal, The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  54. Ibid.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Belkin, “Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?”

  57. Rand, Sexual Orientation.

  58. Elizabeth Kier, “Rights and Fights: Sexual Orientation and Military Effectiveness,” International Security 24 (Summer 1999): 195.

  59. See David Segal, Paul Gade, and Edgar Johnson, “Social Science Research on Homosexuals in the Military,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military, 47; Aaron Belkin and Jason McNichol, “Pink and Blue: Outcomes Associated with the Integration of Open Gay and Lesbian Personnel in the San Diego Police Department,” white paper, Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001; Rand, Sexual Orientation; John Bicknell, “Study of Naval Officers’ Attitudes Toward Homosexuals in the Military,” master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, March, 2000.

  60. Aaron Belkin, “ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: Does the Gay Ban Undermine the Military’s Reputation?” Armed Forces and Society 34, no. 2 (2008): 276–91; Laura Miller, “Fighting for a Just Cause,” in Scott and Stanley, Gays and Lesbians in the Military, 80.

  61. Belkin, “Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?”; see also Segal, Gade, and Johnson, “Social Science Research on Homosexuals in the Military,” 42; Belkin and McNichol, “Pink and Blue.” Segal et al. report a “consensus that most homosexuals in the military do not come out, but rather keep their sexual orientation a private matter, even where policy and practice allow them to serve.” Their report is from 1994, and evidence since then suggests that, while most gays use discretion in deciding when and whether to come out, most are known to be gay by at least some peers and often by supervisors.