The U.S. military is so desperate for volunteers that it's wooing recruits who might normally be considered too dumb, fat, old or morally unfit to serve. It's forcing some soldiers to stay after their time is up, and it's buying the loyalty of others with retention bonuses of up to $150,000.
The military is also drop-kicking gay service members out the back door at a rate of about two or three a day. This may seem like a good reason to condemn the military as bigoted and shortsighted --or even to ban recruiters from campus, as thousands of high schools and colleges have tried to do.
But the military is just following orders from Congress. If students or other Americans want the Pentagon to end its ban on openly gay service members, they can't bully the military into changing its mind. They have to persuade Congress to change the law.
In other words, the people who should be barred from campuses, or otherwise ostracized for bigotry and shortsightedness, are the politicians who support the gay ban --not the soldiers who carry it out.
"If you're going to protest, protest where the problem is," says John Allen Williams, a retired Naval Reserve captain who is a professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago and chairman of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. "Tell Hillary Clinton she can't come on campus until she fixes the law, if that's what you want."
Congress passed the "don't ask, don't tell" law in 1993, at the urging of President Clinton. The policy softened the military's total gay ban by creating a kind of special closet. Military leaders would promise not to ask about sexual orientation. In return, gay service members would promise to suppress all words or actions that might betray their sexuality.
The punishment for coming out of the closet was swift discharge.
Since 1993, the military has discharged about 10,000 active duty service members for violating the gay ban. That may not seem like many, considering the military's size and turnover: The U.S. Armed Services has 2.7 million members, and the number of people kicked out for being gay account for less than one-half of 1 percent of all discharges, according to the Government Accountability Office.
But the costs of the gay ban are increasingly hard to ignore.
As the GAO found this year, the military has spent about $200 million since 1993 to recruit and train replacements for the service members discharged for being gay.
The ban also affects national security. Eight percent of the discharged service members had "mission-critical occupations," the GAO found. Many of these jobs remain empty, as the military hunts for heterosexual replacements.
Hardest to quantify is the cost of the cultural divide between soldiers and civilians.
"The ban sends a signal to the moderate middle that the military is out of touch with society," says Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Americans may have supported "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993, but times have changed. Sixty-seven percent of Americans now want the ban fully lifted, according to a national Annenberg poll.
The military is evolving, too. Fifty percent of junior enlisted service members say that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly, according to the same Annenberg poll. Most older officers still support the ban, but the younger crowd is coming around.
Congress, however, remains stuck in the past --as if civil unions and "Will & Grace" never happened.
Clearly, the ban needs to go. But it won't go anywhere as long as opposition remains fixed on military recruiters who visit high schools and colleges. These recruiters don't write the laws or issue the executive orders. They're easy targets, not decision-makers.
The public must push Congress and the president to lift the ban. This change is unlikely under President Bush, but eventually, the idea that homosexuality is a firing offense will become intolerable.
Barring that, I like the idea of barring politicians from school campuses until they change the law. With all of those 1990s-era prejudices, they're a bad influence.
Associate Editor Susan Nielsen: susannielsen@news.oregonian.com
The military is also drop-kicking gay service members out the back door at a rate of about two or three a day. This may seem like a good reason to condemn the military as bigoted and shortsighted --or even to ban recruiters from campus, as thousands of high schools and colleges have tried to do.
But the military is just following orders from Congress. If students or other Americans want the Pentagon to end its ban on openly gay service members, they can't bully the military into changing its mind. They have to persuade Congress to change the law.
In other words, the people who should be barred from campuses, or otherwise ostracized for bigotry and shortsightedness, are the politicians who support the gay ban --not the soldiers who carry it out.
"If you're going to protest, protest where the problem is," says John Allen Williams, a retired Naval Reserve captain who is a professor of political science at Loyola University Chicago and chairman of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. "Tell Hillary Clinton she can't come on campus until she fixes the law, if that's what you want."
Congress passed the "don't ask, don't tell" law in 1993, at the urging of President Clinton. The policy softened the military's total gay ban by creating a kind of special closet. Military leaders would promise not to ask about sexual orientation. In return, gay service members would promise to suppress all words or actions that might betray their sexuality.
The punishment for coming out of the closet was swift discharge.
Since 1993, the military has discharged about 10,000 active duty service members for violating the gay ban. That may not seem like many, considering the military's size and turnover: The U.S. Armed Services has 2.7 million members, and the number of people kicked out for being gay account for less than one-half of 1 percent of all discharges, according to the Government Accountability Office.
But the costs of the gay ban are increasingly hard to ignore.
As the GAO found this year, the military has spent about $200 million since 1993 to recruit and train replacements for the service members discharged for being gay.
The ban also affects national security. Eight percent of the discharged service members had "mission-critical occupations," the GAO found. Many of these jobs remain empty, as the military hunts for heterosexual replacements.
Hardest to quantify is the cost of the cultural divide between soldiers and civilians.
"The ban sends a signal to the moderate middle that the military is out of touch with society," says Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Americans may have supported "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993, but times have changed. Sixty-seven percent of Americans now want the ban fully lifted, according to a national Annenberg poll.
The military is evolving, too. Fifty percent of junior enlisted service members say that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly, according to the same Annenberg poll. Most older officers still support the ban, but the younger crowd is coming around.
Congress, however, remains stuck in the past --as if civil unions and "Will & Grace" never happened.
Clearly, the ban needs to go. But it won't go anywhere as long as opposition remains fixed on military recruiters who visit high schools and colleges. These recruiters don't write the laws or issue the executive orders. They're easy targets, not decision-makers.
The public must push Congress and the president to lift the ban. This change is unlikely under President Bush, but eventually, the idea that homosexuality is a firing offense will become intolerable.
Barring that, I like the idea of barring politicians from school campuses until they change the law. With all of those 1990s-era prejudices, they're a bad influence.
Associate Editor Susan Nielsen: susannielsen@news.oregonian.com
