Don't ask, don't tell

"Don't ask, don't tell" is the common term for the U.S. military policy which implements Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 103–160 (10 U.S.C. § 654). Unless one of the numerous exceptions from 10 U.S.C. § 654(b) applies, the policy prohibits anyone who "demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because it "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." The act prohibits any homosexual or bisexual person from disclosing his or her sexual orientation, or from speaking about any homosexual relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces. The policy also requires that as long as gay or bisexual men and women in the military hide their sexual orientation, commanders are not allowed to investigate their sexuality. The net effect of this policy is that the military does not take an official stance against gay or bisexual desire; one must engage in open homosexual acts to commit a punishable offense.

Beginning of the policy

The policy was introduced as a compromise measure in 1993 and approved by then President Bill Clinton who, while campaigning for the Presidency, had promised to allow all citizens regardless of sexual orientation to serve openly in the military, a departure from the then complete ban on those who are not heterosexual. The actual policy was crafted by Colin Powell and has been maintained by Clinton's successor, George W. Bush.

Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct. The military will discharge members who engage in homosexual conduct, which is defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender.

— quoted in "The Pentagon's New Policy Guidelines on Homosexuals in the Military", The New York Times (July 201993), p.A14.

More generally, "Don't ask, don't tell" has come to describe any instance in which one person must keep sexual orientation and any related attributes, including family, a secret, but where deliberate lying would be undesirable.

History

During the American Revolutionary War, the armed forces treated sodomy (then broadly defined as oral or anal sexual conduct) as grounds for being dishonorably discharged. The first such recorded discharge was in 1778, when Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin was (with the approval of General George Washington) dishonorably discharged following a conviction of homosexual sodomy and perjury. The Articles of War maintained the crime of sodomy, but it was not until 1942 that the armed forces considered homosexual status (as assessed by the military through a process of recruitment screening or internal investigations) as grounds for being separated from the military. Thus, anyone in the armed forces labeled as gay or bisexual were subject to criminal sanctions under the sodomy prohibition, or could be given a dishonorable discharge (often a Section 8) and returned to civilian life, where they would not receive veterans benefits and often had difficulty finding employment because most civilian employers knew what a Section 8 discharge meant.

The success of the armed forces in pre-screening self-identified gay and bisexual people from the 1940s through 1981 remains in dispute; during the Vietnam Conflict, some men pretended to be gay in order to avoid the draft. However, a significant number of gay and bisexual men and women did manage to avoid the pre-screening process and serve in the military, some with special distinction. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Navy medical doctor Tom Dooley received national fame for his anti-Communist and humanitarian efforts in Vietnam. His homosexuality was something of an open secret in the Navy, but eventually he was forced to resign; the Navy subsequently conducted the first official study on sexual orientation and the Navy regulations and rules. The 1957 report, titled Report of the Board Appointed to Prepare and Submit Recommendations to the Secretary of the Navy for the Revision of Policies, Procedures and Directives Dealing With Homosexuals (better known as the Crittenden Report) found that gay-identified people were no more likely to be a security risk than heterosexual-identified people, and found there was no rational basis for excluding gay people from the Navy, although it stopped short of recommending a change in the regulations because of social mores.

Beyond the official regulations, gay people were often the target of various types of harassment by their fellow servicemen, designed to persuade them to resign from the military or turn themselves in to investigators. The most infamous type of such harassment was called a blanket party; during the night in the barracks, several service members first covered the face of the victim with a blanket and then committed assault, often quite severely and sometimes even fatally, as in the case of Allen R. Schindler, Jr.. When passing the "Don't ask, don't tell" bill, President Clinton cited U.S. Navy Radioman Third Class Schindler, who was brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey (with the aid of an accomplice), leaving a "nearly-unrecognizable corpse". The introduction of "Don't ask, don't tell" with the later amendment of "don't pursue, don't harass" has officially prohibited such behavior, but reports suggest that such harassment continues.

The degree of official and unofficial attempts to separate gay people from the armed forces seems to be directly related to the personnel needs of the armed forces. Hence, during wartime, it has not been uncommon for the rules regarding homosexuality to be relaxed. Until 1981, it was the policy of all branches of the armed forces to retain, at their discretion, anyone suspected of homosexual activity, thus promoting the "queen for a day" rule, which allowed a person accused of homosexuality to remain in the armed forces if one could successfully claim that their behavior was only a singular occurrence. This especially became the case during the Vietnam War.

During the 1970s, several high-profile court challenges to the military's regulations on homosexuality occurred, with little success, and when such successes did occur it was when the plaintiff had been open about his homosexuality from the beginning or due to the existence of the "queen for a day" rule. In 1981, the Department of Defense issued a new regulation on homosexuality that was designed to ensure withstanding a court challenge by developing uniform and clearly defined regulations and justifications that made homosexual status, whether self-applied or by the military, and conduct grounds for discharge (DOD Directive 1332.14 (Enlisted Administrative Separations), January, 1981):

Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among service members; to insure the integrity of the system of rank and command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of service members who frequently must live and work in close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the armed forces; to maintain the public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.

The directive justified the policy and removed the "queen for a day" rule that had prompted some courts to rule against the armed forces. However, the intent of the policy had also been to treat homosexuality as being akin to a disability discharge and thus ensure that anyone found engaging in homosexual activity and/or identifying as gay, would be separated with an honorable discharge. The DOD policy has since withstood most court challenges, although the United States Supreme Court has refused to weigh in on the constitutionality of the policy, preferring to allow lower courts and the United States Congress to settle the matter.

In the 1980s, many of the Democratic Party presidential candidates expressed an interest in changing the regulations concerning homosexuality in the armed forces, and, as American social mores changed, public opinion began to express more sympathy with gay people in armed forces, at least to the extent that investigations into a serviceman or -woman's sexual behaviour and/or orientation were seen as a witch-hunt. "Gays in the military" became a political issue during the 1992 Presidential campaign, when Clinton, the Democratic candidate, promised to lift the military's ban on homosexual and bisexual people.

In 1992, the United States General Accounting Office published a report entitled Defense Force Management: DOD’s Policy on Homosexuality. GAO/NSAID-92-98, that outlined the DOD policy on homosexuality and the reasons for it. The report also included excerpts from a previously unpublished 1988 DOD study on homosexuality that made similar conclusions as the 1957 Crittenden Report. In 1993 the two reports were published alongside an argument by an armed forces general who argued against lifting the ban on homosexual- and bisexual-identified people based on a belief that they pose a security risk, will erode unit cohesion and morale alongside the argument that most homosexual and bisexual oriented people are pedophiles who engage in a self-destructive and immoral life-style.

Congressional opposition to lifting the ban on gay and bisexual people in the armed forces was led by Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia who organized Congressional hearings that largely buffed the armed forces position that has remained unchanged since the 1981 directive. While Congressional support for reform was led by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who fought for a compromise, and retired Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who argued for a complete repeal of the ban. After a large number of people flooded the Congressional phone lines with oppositions to lifting the ban, President Clinton soon backed off on his campaign promise to lift the ban on homosexual and bisexual people in the armed forces. The final result was a Congressional compromise of "Don't ask, don't tell" that was later amended to include "don't harass". Officially, the compromise dictates that the armed forces will no longer ask recruits about their sexual activity and/or orientation, will not investigate any serviceman or servicewoman's sexual activity and/or orientation without solid evidence (thus preventing witch-hunts), and self-identified homosexual servicemen and women agree that they will not engage in homosexual sex acts, or do anything that announces that they are a homosexual, i.e. public statements or participate in a same-sex marriage openly.

In 2000, Northwestern University Professor Charles Moskos, the principal author of DADT (which, as originally coined by Moskos, was "Don't Ask Don't Tell; Don't Seek Don't Flaunt"), told "Lingua Franca" that he felt that policy will be gone within five to ten years. Moskos also dismissed the unit cohesion argument, instead arguing that gay people should be banned due to "modesty rights", saying "Fuck unit cohesion. I don't care about that...I should not be forced to shower with a woman. I should not be forced to shower with a gay [man]." Moskos did not offer any alternative to his DADT policy.

In 2005, member of Congress Marty Meehan (third from left) unsuccessfully attempted to repeal the policy

On September 13, 2005, the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (on October 23, 2006 renamed the Michael D. Palm Center), a think tank affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, issued a news release revealing the existence of a 1999 FORSCOM regulation (Regulation 500-3-3) that allowed the active duty deployment of Army Reservists and National Guard troops who say that they are gay or who are accused of being gay. U.S. Army Forces Command spokesperson Kim Waldron later confirmed the regulation and indicated that it was intended to prevent Reservists and National Guard members from pretending to be gay to escape combat.

"Don't ask, don't tell" has been upheld five times in federal court, and in a recent Supreme Court case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the federal government could withhold funding in order to force universities to accept military recruiters in spite of their nondiscrimination policies.

Public opinion

Polls have shown that a large majority of the American public favors allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly in the U.S. military. A national poll conducted in May 2005 by the Boston Globe showed 79% of participants having nothing against openly gay people from serving in the military. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2006 showed that 60% favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, with 31% opposed. [2] However, the military remains largely opposed. An Army Times poll of military members only found 25% in favor of allowing homosexuals to serve openly. [3]

Statistics

Statistics on the number of persons discharged from the military due to homosexuality in the fiscal years since the policy was first introduced (1993):

Year	Coast Guard	Marines	Navy	Army	Air Force	Total
1994	0	36	258	136	187	617
1995	15	69	269	184	235	772
1996	12	60	315	199	284	870
1997	10	78	413	197	309	1,007
1998	14	77	345	312	415	1,163
1999	12	97	314	271	352	1,046
2000	19	104	358	573	177	1,231
2001*	—	—	—	—	—	1,273
2002*	—	—	—	—	—	906
2003*	—	—	—	—	—	787
2004	15	59	177	325	92	668
2005	16	75	177	386	88	742
Total	113	655	2,626	2,583	2,139	11,082

• * Breakdown of discharges by service branch not available
• 1994-2003 from Servicemembers Legal Defense Network - Annual Gay Discharges Under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass"
• 2004-2005 from 365Gay.com - Military Discharging Two Soldiers Per Day For Being Gay Despite War Group Says

Financial impact of policy

In February 2005, the Government Accountability Office released estimates on the cost of the policy. Cautioning that the amount may be too low, the GAO reported $95.4 million in recruiting costs and $95.1 million for training replacements for the 9,488 troops discharged from 1994 through 2003.

In February 2006, a University of California Blue Ribbon Commission including Lawrence Korb, a former assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, former Defense Secretary William Perry, a member of the Clinton administration, and professors from West Point U.S. Military Academy concluded that figure should be closer to $363 million, including $14.3 million for "separation travel" once a service member is discharged, $17.8 million for training officers, $252.4 million for training enlistees and $79.3 million in recruiting costs. The commission report stated that the GAO didn't take into account the value the military lost from the departures.

Military Readiness Enhancement Act

The Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1246) is a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 28, 2007. Sponsored by Representative Marty Meehan (D-MA) with 136 cosponsors, the bill is currently in committee.

The stated purpose of the bill is "to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as 'Don't ask, don't tell', with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

A previous version of the bill was introduced in the Republican-controlled 109th Congress. The bill did not make it out of committee.

Criticism from military personnel

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili (Ret.) and former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen spoke against the policy publicly in early January 2007: "I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces," General Shalikashvili wrote. "Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

In December 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals urged Congress to repeal the policy. They cited evidence that 65,000 gay men and women are currently serving in the armed forces, and that there are over 1,000,000 gay veterans.

2008 Presidential candidates' positions

Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, former Democratic candidate John Edwards, Republican candidates Ron Paul, and Libertarian candidates Wayne Allyn Root and George Phillies all favor repealing the policy and allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly in the armed forces. When questioned during a June 2007 debate, all major Republican candidates indicated support for keeping the current policy.

Situation outside the United States

Main article: Sexual orientation and military service

Some Western military forces have now removed policies excluding individuals of other sexual orientations (with strict policies on sexual harassment). Of the 25 countries that participate militarily in NATO, more than twenty permit gay people to serve; of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, two (Britain, France) permit gay people to serve openly, and three (United States, Russia, China) do not.

Australia

The Commonwealth of Australia policies are to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Recent attention has been drawn to dual American-Australian Norbert Basil MacLean III who served in the U.S. Navy from 1989-94 but was court-martialled on what he claims were trumped up charges due to his sexuality. Had MacLean served in the Royal Australian Navy he would have been permitted to serve as an openly gay man. MacLean's case in America has resulted in two Congressional bills in both Houses of the 110th U.S. Congress related to Supreme Court review of American courts-martial cases.

Canada

On October 27th, 1992, protocol officer Michelle Douglas won a suit against the Canadian Forces for discrimination that had forced her resignation. Subsequently, Canada's official policy toward gay men and women in uniform has been one of non-discrimination.

A series of provincial and territorial Supreme Court decisions beginning in the summer of 2003 ruled in favour of the legality of gay marriage, and a national law to that effect was passed by Canada's parliament in the summer of 2005 by the Paul Martin Liberal government. In May of 2005, the Canada's first military gay wedding took place at Nova Scotia's Canadian Forces Base Greenwood. Officials described the ceremony as low-key but touching. A similar wedding has since taken place between two male Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom's policy is to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly and discrimination on a sexual orientation basis is forbidden. It is also forbidden for someone to pressure LGBT people to come out. All personnel are subject to the same "no-touching" rules.

Israel

The IDF policies allow for gay men and lesbians to serve openly without discrimination or harassment due to actual or perceived sexual orientation. Moreover, gays in the IDF have special rights, such as the right to take a shower alone if they want to.

Switzerland

Switzerland's military policies also allow for gay men and lesbians to serve openly without discrimination or harassment due to actual or perceived sexual orientation.

See also

• Allen Schindler - Sailor who was murdered in a hate crime committed by other sailors.
• Barry Winchell - American soldier who was killed by other soldiers whilst serving, because he was thought to be a homosexual.
• Margarethe Cammermeyer - Retired colonel in the Washington National Guard and a gay rights activist.
• Norbert Basil MacLean III - Dual American-Australian citizen who served in U.S. Navy.
• Holmes v. California National Guard
• Thomasson v. Perry - The first test of "Don't ask, don't tell" to reach the Supreme Court was turned down without comment and without setting a precedent.
• Sexual orientation and military service

Further reading

1. Johansson, Warren and William A Percy. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994.
2. Shilits, Randy (1994). Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military.
3. Carter, Chad C. and Kolenc, Antony B. Law Review Article:Template:PDFlink University of Dayton Law Review, Fall 2005.
4. Zylbergold,Bonnie (2007) "The Key to Enlightenment: Semper-fi, a documentary about ex-marine Jeff Key, showcased at Frameline31", American Sexuality Magazine

External links

• 10 U.S.C. § 654 — Policy concerning homosexuality in the armed forces
• Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Gays and U.S. Military Policy
• Human Rights Campaign
• Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
• Chronology of "Don't ask, don't tell"
• Michael D. Palm Center
• A New Kind of War, An Old Kind of Prejudice by Brian W. Fairbanks
• Blue Alliance - LGBT Alumni of the US Air Force Acdemy