Gay rights movements and social change

Gays in the Military: The History and Issues of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

It is the author's contention that homosexuality in the military is not a problem per se. So often in any political sexual scandal (the Monica Lewinsky scandal comes to mind), secrecy is the issue. In intelligence circles, "loose lips sink ships," but if the ship's departure is public knowledge, what is the issue? Admittedly, Clinton came out of the closet during the 1992 Presidential Election and then went back in with regard to Monica Lewinsky. However, this behavior is not the norm. Most people act normally once the secret is out of the closet unless they have addictive behaviors that they want to hide due to some moral hang ups. In this paper, it will be demonstrated that a pragmatic, deliberate, but slow expansion of the present policy is better that a sudden, confrontational approach.

In fact, as far as gays in the military are concerned, the practice is at least as old as ancient Greece. Sparta was very well know for its homoerotic (really bisexual) practices amongst their warriors. In Sparta, they were interested in military power and little else. Everything in their society was geared toward building this power and in enhancing the military. Sex was not and exception to this eugenic approach to law. Sparta rigidly controlled who lived, who died, who could give birth and when to engage in homosexual and heterosexual activity. The barracks were no different and the sexual lives of the citizen-soldiers and women were proscribed and built around the production of males for fighting and their molding into military units. Younger citizen males learned from their older superiors about Spartan civics and military science in the bedroom as well as on the parade field. These soldier-citizens were lovers. Sexual bonds as well as love were used by the Spartan state to foster social and unite cohesion literally and physically man to man. This buttressed their fighting spirit and motivation to give all for their comrades.

Sparta was a homosexual/bisexual state in nature and its military supported that state. Heterosexual love, infrequent and by permission of the state were meant to foster children. Even in this situation, wives were shared to break down family attachments. The Spartan soldier had no loyalty to family, wife or children. Rather, he was minted to serve the Spartan state. By actively promoting homosexual companionship in a military context as the only permanently permitted source of sexual gratification, the state made sure that love, sex and bedroom were subjugated to the needs of the country.

Spartan males shared communal barracks and mess halls. Their hyper male sexuality heightened male machismo and duty. Their lover was their companion and policeman, reminding the soldier of his code of conduct and duty to the state. Big brother was literally looking over the soldier's shoulder at all times (Pacion). With this ethos, Sparta won the Peloponesian War and dominated Greece until the time of the rise of Thebes.

The famed Theban Band was legendary for its homosexuality. Like most cities in classical Greece, their constitutions took notice of the fact of male love. However, the males engaging in the homosexuality were married and had families in order to produce children for the state, including military service. The reasons for these homosexual bonds were to bond the youth to their conservative mentors. Unlike in Sparta, the democratic city states saw this as insurance against tyranny.

In the military service, gay male love was a way to build up military morale. The Theban general Gorgidas formed the Theban Band out of pairs of lovers. This military strategy made Thebes the most powerful city state and dominant in Greece for more than a generation until they were knocked off that pedestal by Alexander the Great's father, Philip of Macedon (White 416)

After the mention of Sparta and Thebes, Alexander the Great is the best known of the examples of bisexual soldiers who championed the Hellenistic ideals of masculinity and conquered most of the known world in the process. The love relationship that he had with his head general and lover Hephaestion conquered an empire and set the paradigm of the Greek Hellenistic tradition as a bedrock of Western Civilization via those conquests (Hephaestion). More examples are hardly needed. Given the right social support, a gay military can have cohesion and victory on the battlefield.

However, what about gay soldiers in a primarily heterosexual society? Or, do we just "don't ask don't tell? We do not know for sure and have to look at the recent history of this subject, its pitfalls and whether or not it could theoretically work now.

The modern concerns that the military has regarding homosexuality and other sexual issues revolve mainly around security and good order and discipline. Frankly, issues that would never concern civilians concern the military very much due to the life and death nature of the military life style. If something, especially sexuality is out of the closet, it is not as much of a problem as it is no longer an issue that can be used in blackmail and spying.

The classic case of homosexual blackmail and the military is the celebrated case of Austrian Colonel Alfred Redl who was turned by the Russians as a spy before World War I. Entrapped initially by his homosexuality, he was kept ensnared by money and his treason almost certainly caused the death of tens of thousands of Austrian soldiers during the opening days of the War as the Russians crashed through the Austrian lines like a steamroller. This Russian advance into Austria indirectly enhanced the German paranoia as the three pronged offensive (two going into East Prussia) prompted the Germans to peel off two Army Corps and contributed directly to the French, British and Belgian stand at the Marne that stopped the German Army from victory before it reached Paris (Colonel Redl).

Like Bill Clinton's debacle with Monica Lewinsky, the main issue was secrecy. Out of the closet, this issue disappears. This mainly leaves the issue of good order and discipline, a general term that denotes anything that violates the military society's sense of order.

In the early 1990's the gays in the military ban came into focus and peaked during the early Clinton administration which passed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that has been the watchword since then. However, the 1990's did not mark the beginning of the move to normalize the treatment of the gays in the military. After the Second World War II, studies in manpower needs spurred greater studies into the issues of gay and lesbian service members. Out of this milieu came the U.S. Navy's Crittenden Report in 1957 that argued that the argument that the assumption that homosexuals were more of a security risk than heterosexuals was a red herring and that gay men and women were not any more sexual predators than heterosexuals were (Bateman 12).

However, studies are one issue. Can the culture of the military in reality ever change? Is a human life worth a social experiment? On July 3, 1999, Private Calvin Glover challenged Private First Class Barry Winchell (popularly vilified in the unit as a "faggot") to a fistfight in front of their Fort Campbell, Kentucky barracks. After Winchell won, Glover endured two days of hazing for having his "ass kicked by a faggot." After borrowing a baseball bat, he beat Winchell to death in the barracks while he slept.

Could enforcement of the "don't ask don't tell" provisions have saved Winchell's life? Certainly, these questions were asked at the official inquiry into PFC Winchell's death. According to the preventative point-of-view, punishing his sergeant for calling him a faggot on a repeated basis contributed to the dehumanization of Winchell. Those who are proponents of gays in the military say that post commander Major General Robert T. Clark could have prevented Winchell's death by refusing to tolerate antigay abuse (ibid 2).