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Southern Voice/August 16,1990 13
FEATURE
Debunking the Pentagon’s Prejudice
The issue of equal rights for unmarried domestic partners is fast coming to a boil. Will Atlanta make the move?
In the fall of 1989 openly gay Congressman
Gerry Studds obtained a copy of a set of
suppressed Defense Department reports
on gays and lesbians in the military.
Those reports have now been printed in
book form by Alyson Publications.
What follows is Studds's introduction and
one of the reports that he unearthed.
by Congressman Gerry S. Studds
On October 17,1989,1 was handed a Defense
Department study entitled "Nonconforming Sexual
Orientations and Military Suitability." It was a document
I had worked for over six months to obtain.
This report—the entirety of which appears in Gays in
Uniform: The Pentagon's secret reports and an excerpt
from which appear with this article—is a scholarly, dis
passionate, clear analysis of whether gays, lesbians and
bisexuals are suitable to serve in the U.S. military. The
Defense Department has long maintained that homosexu
ality is somehow patently "incompatible with military ser
vice," the exemplary military records of countless lesbian
and gay veterans notwithstanding.
The study's finding is simple and unequivocal: that
sexuality is unrelated to job performance in the same way
as is being left- or right-handed. While this conclusion
may seem quite obvious to many, the Department of
Defense evidently found it disturbing, and immediately
tried to suppress the report.
Over five months of calling, writing and cajoling, my
office was told variously that the report was "unavail
able," "still under consideration," that it would "be
Congressman Gerry Studds
released sometime soon," and on occasion even that "no
such report exists." This stonewalling only served to
underscore to me the document's importance. Finally,
with assistance from House Armed Services
Subcommittee Chairwoman Patricia Schroeder, our per
sistence paid off and the report landed on my desk.
An unanticipated by-product of our struggle came
when, three days after we publicly released the report, a
second Pentagon study of homosexuality arrived in an
unmarked manila envelope. This second report rather
startlingly suggested that gay men and lesbians display
military suitability "that is as good or better than the aver
age heterosexual." I cannot help but wonder how many
more Defense Department studies of this nature await our
discovery.
These materials are significant historical documents.
They effectively debunk the military's baseless contention
that gay men and lesbians are by their very nature unsuit
able for military service. They will no doubt play an
important role in ending the shameful discrimination and
persecution to which our own military daily subjects an
entire class of our citizenry.
This institutionalized prejudice is a national disgrace,
and has no place in our armed forces. When it ends—and
some day it will—openly gay and lesbian generals, admi
rals, pilots, and foot-soldiers will stand as proud examples
of the depth, breadth, and capabilities of our gay and les
bian community. These men and women will, as visible
members of our nation's military, be on the frontlines in
the continuing fight to end homophobia wherever it may
be found.
Nonconforming Sexual Orientations
and Military Suitability
Although not well-publicized, the
available data all point to the conclusion
that preservice background characteriza
tion and subsequent job performance of
homosexuals in the military is satisfactory
(Williams & Weinberg, 1971; McDaniel,
1989; Zuliani, 1986; Crittenden Report,
1957). Whether the presence of men or
women identified as nonconforming in
sexual orientation actually influences such
features of military life as discipline,
group morale, integrity, etc., can be set out
as a hypothesis and tested directly and
indirectly. Such testing would be similar
to the testing carried out by research teams
when black soldiers were integrated into
formerly all-white platoons, battalions, or
regiments. The intensity of prejudice
against homosexuals may be of the same
order as the prejudice against blacks in
1948, when the military was ordered to
integrate.
The order to integrate blacks was first
met with stout resistance by traditionalists
in the military establishment Dire conse
quences were predicted for maintaining
discipline, building group morale, and
achieving military organizational goals.
None of these predictions have come true.
Social science specialists helped develop
programs for combating racial discrimina
tion, so that now the military services are
leaders in providing equal opportunity for
black men and women. It would be wise
to consider applying the experience of the
past 40 years to the integration of homo
sexuals.
An examination of recent social and
political history points to the fact that the
courts are slowly moving toward eliminat
ing discrimination on the basis of noncon
forming sexual orientation. Active citizen
groups and lobbies provide support for
advocates of nondiscrimination. Our stud
ied conclusion is that the military services
will soon be asked by the courts or the
Congress to reexamine their policies and
practices regarding recruitment and reten
tion of men and women whose sexual
interests deviate from the customary.
Our analysis directs us to regard people
with nonconforming sexual orientation as
a minority group. Our nation has a long
history of successfully dealing with
minority groups, particularly ethnic
minorities. In the recent past, we have also
learned how to integrate racial and other
minority groups, notably women, into
nearly every aspect of political and social
life. The suggestion that we perceive
homosexual men and women as a minori
ty group follows from our analysis of con
temporary scientific, social, and legal
observations. The social construction of
homosexuals as minority group members
is more in tune with current behavioral
science theory than the earlier construc
tions: sin, crime, and sickness.
Does atypical sexual orientation influ
ence job performance? Studies of homo
sexual veterans make clear that having a
same-gender or an opposite-gender orien
tation is unrelated to job performance in
the same way as is being left- or right
handed (Williams & Weinberg, 1971).
In our study of suitability for military
service, we have been governed by a silent
assumption: that social attitudes are his
torically conditioned. In our own time, we
have witnessed far-reaching changes in
attitudes toward the physically disabled,
people of color, disease prevention, birth
control, cohabitation of unmarried cou
ples, and so on. We have witnessed a
noticeable shift in tolerance for women
and for homosexual men and women in
the civilian workplace.
Excerpted from Gays in Uniform: The
Pentagon's secret reports, edited by Kate
Dyer; introduction by Congressman Gerry
S. Studds (Alyson Publications).
Two Books
Cont'd from page 11
have never seen a book that described
the lives of men who dress as women in
as aggressively sympathetic a way as
this one does.
Coffee table-size with absolutely
wonderful photography, this book is
over-the-top in its approach to cross
dressers, their stories and their families.
The photos lovingly show Merissa in
her flowing gown in the garden holding
a bouquet of flowers; there are pictures
from the marriage of Rened and Keven,
a crossdressing couple, with each in
drag at the ceremony; and then there's
Felicity, a 79-year-old, ex-RAF pilot,
looking for all the world like Agatha
Christie.
These pictures revel in the creativity
and in-your-face "difference" that these
CD's (crossdressers, not compact discs)
are willing to expose to the camera.
Some are before-and-after pictures,
some in-process (eight in all in a series
that leads from Bob to Malinda), some
off to work, others off to the playground
or the mall with their children. They
show us a world at once familiar and
alien.
Indeed, parts of the book are very
disquieting for me—society has condi
tioned me to see the way a crossdresser
speaks of his or her alter ego in the third
person as vaguely schizophrenic—for
instance, Pete saying "At that time, the
only person who knew about Suzy was
my therapist". Most of the CD's in this
book tell childhood stories of mothers
who wanted girls and who dressed their
boys as such from an early age. The way
this book is structured, I can't help but
feel those genderist buttons of mine
being pushed.
And yet the obvious freedom that
these men feel in being able to be a per
son who loves flowing silk robes, flow
ery nighties and even panty hose makes
me suspicious of my ill feelings. Don't
some of the people that I love have those
same ill feelings about my homosexuali
ty? More than one of the CD's says that
they discovered masturbation at the
same time in their teens that they dis
covered crossdressing—a sure sign that
an important personal unleashing has
occurred.
And Transformations goes the extra
mile to show the love and acceptance of
crossdressers that their families are will
ing to share with the the reader. Wives,
children, parents, siblings—they're all in
here with the crossdressers whose pro
nouns and proclivities cannot help but
confuse their lives. And yet they love
them enough to risk this type of expo
sure in order to help them tell their sto
ries.
I would have liked to have seen more
gay crossdressers; I counted only three,
which makes me a bit suspicious. The
vast majority of CD's here seem to be
happily married straight men, whose
otherwise "normalcy" is played up. Is
this an unconscious form of discrimina
tion, designed to show TV's as family
men/women, and not necessarily faggots
and sissies? The author does speak
strongly of the men's liberation move
ment and the importance of the role that
these men are playing in de-stereotypi-
fying masculinity.
Ultimately, I'm willing to forgive my
all suspicions because I sense that this
book’s heart is in the right place. And
that it really wants to help mine get there
too.