American War Stories by Brenda M. Boyle

Author:Brenda M. Boyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

LGB and T since DADT

Although it was not until the 1950 service-wide Uniform Code of Military Justice’s (UCMJ) prohibition against “unnatural carnal copulation” that certain sexual practices were prohibited and punished, people who act on same-sex desire or are alleged to be willing to act on that desire have been unwelcome in the U.S. military since its inception (Frank 9).29 However, before the advent of psychiatry at the turn of the twentieth century, it was the conduct or act of sodomy alone that was punished; after the normalization of psychiatric diagnoses and during World War II, the conduct was interpreted as a personality disorder or sexual psychopathy leading to immediate discharge, an interpretation that meant due process through court-martial was not required and people could be disqualified before enlistment.30 For most of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, the U.S. military has grappled with these two interpretations: chosen practice or psychiatric disorder. As Timothy Haggerty points out, the medical and political discourses concerning same-sex sexual orientation shifted over the course of the twentieth century, requiring American institutions that normalize sexual behavior—including the military—“to discover and regulate both homosexual ‘behavior,’ or same-sex acts, and the homosexual ‘personality,’ or those that have adopted gay, lesbian, or other nonnormative sexual identities” (11).31

Despite understanding this distinction between behavior and personhood, and periodic sponsoring of evidence-based research on the issue by the Department of Defense, repeatedly the military has rejected and often concealed research outcomes that don’t confirm its already-held beliefs. In doing so, the military asserts that its own judgment—exclusive, of course, to military leaders—is superior, thereby silencing any evidentiary-based arguments to the contrary.32 An early instance of research outcomes being suppressed are those from the 1957 U.S. Navy–sponsored “Crittenden Report,” which concluded that (1) homosexuals were no greater security risks than their heterosexual counterparts,33 and (2) there was no evidence that homosexuals were sexually predatory (Haggerty 22–26). The report was only released to the public by court order in 1977 with no apparent intervening changes made to policy (Frank 118). Additional research projects either suppressed or discounted by military judgment include two 1988–1989 reports sponsored by the Defense Department’s Personnel Security Research and Education Center (PERSEREC), whose most remarkable findings were the “unit cohesion” argument used to exclude gays and lesbians from service was based on fear, not fact, and that people who identify as gay or lesbian are better suited to military service than people who identify as heterosexual (Haggerty 36–40; Frank 118–119).34 PERSEREC was chided by the Defense Department in this case for “exceeding authority”—or presuming it could exercise military judgment—in assessing not only the reliability of people who identify as gay or lesbian but also their suitability. A third study was conducted by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in 1992 that reportedly included in an early draft a recommendation that the secretary of defense reconsider the gay exclusion; by the final draft, the recommendation had been excised. Subsequently, not only did the Department of Defense (DoD) dismiss the report,

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