Gays in the military

No need to ask if they belong, they’ve been there all along. My first gay experience was in the Army. We have served, fought and died alongside our straight brothers in arms as long as America has been going to war.

Randy Shilts, the author of “Conduct Unbecoming,” knows otherwise. He has written a convincing and readable narrative on gay life in uniform, from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf. Mr. Shilts, a national correspondent for The San Francisco Chronicle and the author of “And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic,” supports his new book with interviews of more than a thousand people, including military personnel (150 still in uniform, their identities shielded), their families and lawyers. Under the Freedom of Information Act, he gained access to nearly 15,000 pages of material about investigations, courts-martial and policy-making concerning homosexuals in the armed forces. So he delivers some surprising information. He writes:

“Today, gay soldiers jump with the 101st Airborne, wear the Green Beret of the Special Forces and perform top-level jobs in the ‘black world’ of covert operations. Gay Air Force personnel have staffed missile silos in North Dakota, flown the nuclear-armed bombers of the Strategic Air Command and navigated Air Force One. Gay sailors dive with the Navy Seals, tend the nuclear reactors on submarines and teach at the Naval War College. A gay admiral commanded the fleet assigned to one of the highest-profile military operations of the past generation. The homosexual presence on aircraft carriers is so pervasive that social life on the huge ships for the past 15 years has included gay newsletters and clandestine gay discos. Gay Marines guard the President in the White House honor guard and protect U.S. embassies around the world.”

“Conduct Unbecoming” is equally revealing about the difficulties encountered by lesbians in uniform. We learn that women face even greater discrimination than men. When accused of homosexuality, some women “prove” themselves not to be lesbians by having sex with men. Those who will not acquiesce to sexual advances, often by superior officers, are routinely accused of being lesbian and are liable to discharge. Anti-gay regulations have encouraged sexual harassment, the author reports. The records and interviews with lesbians indicate that military commands are far more inclined to investigate homosexuals than to investigate sexual harassment of women.

Mr. Shilts shows the military attitudes by citing the language of Army regulations: “Homosexuality is a manifestation of a severe personality defect, which appreciably limits the ability of such individuals to function effectively in a military environment.” Navy regulations: “Homosexuals and other sexual deviates are military liabilities who cannot be tolerated in a military organization.” And the Air Force: “Participation in a homosexual act, or proposing or attempting to do so, is considered a very serious misbehavior.”

The official language invites a reader to think about such misbehavior as the Tailhook scandal last year, when airmen assaulted servicewomen. That case was first covered up and excused as merely a boys-will-be-boys incident until the women pressed charges and the details were exposed in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The fact is that especially in wartime the military has routinely winked at homosexuality and looked the other way. Figures supplied by Mr. Shilts show that discharges for homosexuality drop under combat conditions, when danger was equally shared and sexual orientation was the least of the military’s problems. From World War II to Desert Storm, regulations banning homosexuals were sidestepped. A vast gay subculture existed within the American military stationed in Vietnam; gay bars on what was Tu Do Street when the city was called Saigon were well known to soldiers on leave. Just as the heterosexual G.I.’s quest for diversion was institutionalized into a circuit of bars and brothels, so was the homosexual’s search for a good time. (Source)

Read more about pioneering journalist Randy Shilts here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.