An Old Narrative About Gays in the Military Re-emerges

It's interesting to watch how new narratives evolve-and are created-when it comes to ongoing national dialogues about critical issues like gays in the military. For years, gay rights groups cast the gay ban in terms of civil rights, arguing that it was a matter of fairness that a major institution like the armed forces not discriminate against capable Americans. Military and traditional values groups prevailed, however, by casting the debate in terms of a choice between gay rights and national security, arguing that granting open gays the right to serve would weaken the military and harm national security.

After 9/11, as America became a nation at war, the narrative changed. Shocked that the military was losing large numbers of critical specialists including Arabic linguists at a time when the forces were stretched thin, Americans came to believe that the gay ban itself was hurting the military and its ability to fight the nation's wars. Mounds of data gave indisputable evidence that the service of gays did not undermine unit cohesion or morale in any way that affected readiness or military capability-indeed, gay service did not harm the military at all, while the policy of discrimination meant brain drain, denial of support services to gays who could not be honest with military professionals, and a forced loss of integrity for gays and the military as a whole. As is always the case in the long history of civil rights battles, equal rights, it turned out, is in the national interest, not at odds with it.

Today, as the prospects for repealing the gay ban seem stronger than ever, it is both unsurprising and dispiriting to see the re-emergence of a simplistic narrative about gays undermining discipline, morale and cohesion. An annual Military Times poll found last month that a slight majority of service members-57% of the active duty population surveyed-opposes lifting the ban to allow open gays to serve. The figure is consistent with polls in previous years, but has been used in the media to create the illusion that there is breaking news about troop resistance to gay service, and that those poll numbers mean serious pause is due in the debate over whether to lift the ban.

The National Review Online's military blog, for instance, called the results "astonishing" and "jaw-dropping," and an article in Newsweek discusses the "insular and more conservative culture" of the military, and suggests that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will "study the issue and canvass opinions" on the matter before advising the new president to move very slowly. "Large institutions need time to adjust," concludes the article.

In fact, the significance of the Military Times data is that this time has passed. Fifteen years ago when the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy was being formulated, 74% of enlistees opposed letting gays serve, and 97% of generals and admirals opposed lifting the ban. The real news is that opposition to gay service from military personnel is dropping sharply, as the current figure of 57% shows. This is also borne out among flag officers, over one hundred of whom just signed a letter calling for an end to the ban. A 2006 Zogby poll found that 72% of Iraq and Afghanistan vets were "personally comfortable" around gays, and in 2004, a University of Pennsylvania poll found that, for the first, time, a bare majority of younger enlisted personnel actually support letting open gays serve.

Part of the problem is that political change is slow, and the media works on "news," not "olds." That means that while the country is having essentially the same conversation over and over again, the media naturally looks for a news hook that makes stale seem fresh. It will be interesting to see if the narrative that takes hold in 2009 reflects a culture that learns from the past or simply seeks to repeat it.