Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:39:17 -0500 Reply-To: CORick@AOL.COM [ Send all responses to CORick@AOL.COM only. Any responses to the list or list-owners will be returned to you. ] [03/27/95 lead editorial in The New Republic] LIFT THE BAN "I charge all of you to carry out this policy with fairness, with balance..."--President Clinton, July 20, 1993. "All service-members will be treated with dignity and respect."--Defense Department Guidelines on Homosexual Conduct in the Armed Forces, July 19, 1993. It has been a year since the U.S. military implemented the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass," with regard to homosexuals in the military. All these don'ts were a tortured compromise between the Clinton administration and the Congress. Roughly speaking, the deal went like this: the ban on gay servicemembers would stand, but the military would go easier on them. The military would not directly ask soldiers if they were gay, as long as they were discreet. There would be no open-ended witch-hunts, no invasive snooping through private lives or possessions. Homosexuals--as long as they lied about themselves--would be treated with respect. Many of us who had been arguing for a simple end to the ban felt that, under the circumstances, this insulting deal was the least-bad option. It was a pragmatic, quarter-way measure, a first stop on the way to full decency. We made a bet that the Pentagon would keep its side of the bargain. (See "Light in the Closet," tnr, August 9, 1993.) We were wrong. The facts about the Clinton compromise are incontestably awful. A year later, the rate of discharge from the military on the grounds of homosexuality has remained steady: about .04 percent of total personnel were booted last year. In the Air Force, the discharge rate has even jumped, from 111 airmen ousted in 1992 to 180 in 1994. Memos were drafted by the Navy and the Air Force in June and November of last year plainly directing commanders to flout the new policy, by allowing open-ended investigations of personnel, questioning of "parents, siblings and close friends," and off-line inquiries into the private lives of servicemembers. Among the U.S. Marine Corps based in Okinawa, Japan, a witch-hunt last spring that entrapped twenty-one marines resembled the worst of the past. In all, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (sldn), the only group to monitor these abuses, meticulously recorded some 340 separate violations of the policy in its first year. The report makes for sobering reading. In Florida, recruiters asked one recruit whether she was homosexual five times, verbally and on outdated written forms. One chief-of-boat asked a sailor, "You're not going to tell me you're a fucking faggot, are you?" (The Pentagon clearly prefers the other kind.) In D.C., a security clearance investigator said to a servicemember, "I'm not going to ask you if you're homosexual, but if I did ask, how would you respond?" An Air Force doctor's mother was called by an official who inquired about her son's sexuality. A South Carolina corporal was turned in by his Naval psychologist for asking questions about homosexuality in private counseling sessions. Inquiry officials in North Carolina asked more than twenty-five servicemembers to speculate about the sexuality of one marine. A seaman faces discharge after his roommate turned over private letters from his personal desk. Where people are harassed--death threats are not unknown--for allegedly being gay, the victims are often too afraid to seek protection, because they fear that telling the authorities will lead to their discharge. Women are especially victimized: they account for about 25 percent of the cases being handled by the sldn, way out of proportion to their numbers. What's going on here? Is this mess the work of rogue commanders? The memos that enforce policy violations suggest otherwise. More revealing, no officials who have flouted "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" have been disciplined. Even when officials have admitted to violations, they've nonetheless argued at discharge boards that those transgressions aren't grounds for servicemembers to object. There are, in short, no costs for subversion--and there is even subtle encouragement. When we asked the Pentagon to comment on sldn's report, they told us that it was not being dismissed, but that they believe the policy in general is working. It sure is. The policy is working as a cover for persecuting Americans who serve their country. It has made protest look unreasonable while keeping discrimination intact. The compromise, in short, has failed in the worst possible way; it is now the principal means to perpetuate the old persecution. The only honorable thing for the president to do is what he should have done two years ago: lift the ban by executive order, let the Congress overrule it and fight the ban in the courts. The enemies of lifting the ban, it is apparent, are the enemies of the most elementary of decencies. Does the president really wish to be counted among them? QUIT