New York Times, January 13, 1999

Source: Coit Blacker and Lawrence J. Korb
Publication Date: January 1999

By Coit Blacker
and Lawrence J. Korb

Coit Blacker, deputy director of Stanford's Institute for
International Studies, was on the National Security Council staff under
President Clinton. Lawrence J. Korb, a vice president of the Council on
Foreign Relations, was an assistant secretary of defense under President
Ronald Reagan.

After Bill Bradley and Al Gore said last week that they would expect
members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to let gays serve openly in the
military, opponents protested yet again that the policy would undermine the
ability of military people to work together. This concern for so-called
unit cohesion is the official justification for the military's ban on gay
people who admit their sexual orientation. The idea is that because many
soldiers don't like gay men and lesbians, they will not be able to form the
bonds of trust with them that are necessary for effectiveness in combat.

There is no real data, however, to support this notion. What the
evidence suggests is that the sexual orientation of members of a military
unit is not a factor in its performance.

Hundreds of studies, summarized most recently in a 1998 report published
in the Harvard University journal International Security, show that whether
a unit's members like each other has no impact on its performance. What
matters is whether they are committed to the same goals in their work.
Since the commanding goal of military units is a well-functioning defense,
and even the Pentagon acknowledges that gay soldiers are as patriotic as
everybody else, the studies conclude that dislike of gays will have no
effect on military performance.

Though many Americans may not know it, the military could simply look
within for another test of the workability of units with members who are
frank about being gay. Because some commanders are tolerant of
homosexuality, there are large pockets in the military where gays already
serve openly and, overall, these operations function at least as well as
any others. The evidence from academic studies is that when commanders
insist on tolerance, there are no problems.

And what of the wartime experience? If homosexuals undermined unit
cohesion, then discharges of gay soldiers should increase in wartime, when
cohesion is most important. Precisely the opposite is true. The Navy
discharged only 483 gay men and lesbians (about half its annual average) in
1950, at the height of the Korean war, and 461 (about half its annual
average) in 1970, during the Vietnam War. During the Persian Gulf war the
Pentagon issued a ``stop-loss'' order preventing discharges on the basis of
gay orientation until after the fighting was over.

Opponents of lifting the ban say that the Pentagon reduces gay
discharges during wars to prevent heterosexuals from escaping military
service by pretending to be gay. However, if there really were a problem
with the functioning of combat units, it is likely that concern over their
survival would prevail over the administrative problems of dealing with
heterosexuals trying to get away under false pretenses. And in any case,
the military and Congress could solve any problem of pretenders to
homosexuality by simply lifting the gay ban.

In Canada, senior officers made the same objections to the service of
acknowledged homosexuals that we hear today, but when the decision was
made in 1992 to allow it, none of the predictions came true. Israel,
Australia and Norway had the same experience, and academic studies show
similar results in American police and fire departments. Opponents say
none of this is relevant because few homosexuals came out of the closet
after these organizations lifted their bans. But that in itself is
instructive. A preference for discretion is another reason not to fear
ending the ban.

No scholars argue that without the ban, every unit would always be
cohesive. But isolated cases of conflict are nothing new, and they do not
require the discharge of entire classes of people - racial and religious
minorities, for example.

The fears of many military leaders seem to be based on anecdotes and
speculation rather than on solid data, and military discrimination appears
driven more by prejudice than necessity.