1 Sexual Orientation Integration in the Army

SEXUAL ORIENTATION INTEGRATION IN THE ARMY1 David R. Segal University of Maryland Background In 1973, at the dawning of the current all- volunteer military force (AVF), I took a leave of absence from my faculty position at the University of Michigan to direct the sociology program at the recently established Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI). Many of the recent and current social issues regarding the military, including gender, sexual orientation, and military families were not on the army’s research agenda at that point. My research program was largely social problems oriented, focusing on racial tensions, drug and alcohol abuse, and morale. However, two decades later, three elements of that early program were to play into policy discussions on lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military. First, the racial integration of the army was seen by some as a model for sexual orientation integration. Second, I had instituted a research program on comparative military institutions, and in the 1990s, some policy-makers were interested in how other nations were dealing with the issue of sexual orientation. Third, I had a long conversation with then-Secretary of the Army Howard (Bo) Callaway in 1975 regarding the World War II research that purported to show that cohesion had an important impact on military effectiveness. That discussion led to a major research program on cohesion in the 1980s in which I participated as a guest scientist at the Walter Reed Institute of Research (WRAIR). Cohesion had been interpreted as showing that socio-demographic homogeneity was an important factor in achieving cohesion. This research had served as a basis for resisting racial integration in World War II, resisting gender integration in the AVF, and resisting sexual orientation integration in the 1990s. In 1976 I had returned to the academic world, this time at the University of Maryland. I continued to conduct research on military personnel and organization issues with my academic colleagues and graduate students. I also maintained ties to the military research and personnel communities. The Clinton Iteration My involvement in the issue of sexual orientation was triggered by a series of telephone calls. First, in 1992, after President-elect Bill Clinton announced that he intended to honor his presidential campaign promise to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces, Dr. Paul Gade, then director of basic research at ARI, called to ask if I would accompany him and Dr. Edgar Johnson, the ARI director, to a meeting of European military sociologists to be held in Beverly, UK, in early April 1993. This group, a residual of ARI’s program in comparative military sociology, had been meeting periodically, with ARI support, to discuss organizational and personnel research in the military. The 1993 meeting was to discuss national variations in policies and practices 1 Invited paper prepared for the National Science Foundation Workshop on “Bringing Research into the Policy Process,” Arlington, VA, Nov. 21-22, 2014. 1 regarding gays in the military. I had participated in earlier meetings of this group and I agreed to go. Second, after the trip to Beverly had been scheduled, I received a telephone call from Sen. John Warner (R-VA), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was interested in the issue of gays in the military, was sending a member of his staff to meet with European experts to discuss the issue, and inquired about my availability to meet with his staff member. I discussed the request with Drs. Johnson and Gade, as we decided that it would be more appropriate for the government scientists who were sponsoring the trip to speak to the senator’s aide than for me to do so. However, Sen. Warner’s call put me on notice that people on the Hill were aware of my involvement. Third, I received a telephone call from Carla Howery, then associate executive officer of the American Sociological Association (ASA), inviting me to lunch. Over lunch, Carla told me that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) had asked ASA to persuade me to testify on how our allies were dealing with gays in the military at hearings that the committee was scheduling. Charles C. Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University, was going to testify, he was known to be opposed to lifting the ban, and Carla did not want his to be the only sociological voice on record. I told Carla that I was not an expert on gays in the military, and whatever I was going to knew, I had yet to learn in the course of my UK trip. She reminded me that if nobody else knows anything about an issue and you know a little bit, you become the expert. She also pointed out that I had been an advocate for racial and gender equality in the military, and that this issue was one of equality as well. I agreed to testify. Fourth, I received a telephone call from a staff member for the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) saying that they had heard that I was going to testify to the SASC, and asking if I would testify to the HASC as well. However, they did not only want me to testify on the cross-national experience. In addition, they wanted me to take a position on lifting the ban, what strategy to follow if the ban was lifted, and the possible impact on cohesion of lifting the ban if openly gay service personnel being were allowed to serve. To prepare for my testimony, in collaboration with my ARI colleagues, we prepared a synthesis of what we had learned from the conference in the UK and other international conferences (Segal, Gade, & Johnson 1994; Gade, Segal, & Johnson 1996). I also undertook, with colleagues at Maryland, an analysis of the relationship between gender integration and sexual orientation in foreign military forces (Segal, Segal, & Booth 1999). There tended to be a strong positive relationship, but the United States was an outlier, leading the way at the time in gender integration (along with Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway) but lagging in sexual orientation integration (with Greece, Turkey, Italy, UK, and Germany). During the early months of 1993, gay advocacy groups lobbied intensely for the lifting of the ban, and sometimes contacted me with questions. There were also extensive discussions in the Pentagon, in some of which Charles Moskos and I participated—he more than I. My sense was that the senior military were almost universally opposed to lifting the ban, although they were also mindful that a significant number of gay personnel were serving successfully. They moved toward a position of being willing to tolerate the service of gay personnel if those personnel remained in the closet, and under 2 that condition, did not feel it necessary to ask potential recruits about their sexual orientation. Moskos captured this intent in the phrase “Don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT).” We both also met, usually separately, with members of the SASC staff in preparation for the nine hearings that the committee was to hold. In the early meetings, they pressed me for answers to questions I could not answer, such as what percentage of the U.S. population was gay, and what caused homosexuality. Over time they focused on the international comparisons I had studied. My sense was that the committee chair, Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and the senior minority members of the committee, Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) and Senator Warner, did not want the ban lifted. The most outspoken advocate for lifting the ban on the committee was Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). The first hearings, on March 29, 1993, dealt with the historical and legal background of policy on gays in the military. Two days later hearings were held on the relationship between cohesion and combat effectiveness, during which there was frequent reference to three World War II studies that purported to demonstrate the importance of cohesion: S.A. Stouffer’s American Soldier studies (see Ryan 2013), Edward Shils’ and Morris Janowitz’s (1950) paper on the Wehrmacht, and S.L.A. Marshall’s (1950) interviews with infantry companies after combat. A month later, both Moskos and I participated in hearings on “The Experience in Foreign Countries.” This hearing had been delayed to allow for the early April UK conference. The other two members of our panel were Professor Judith H. Stiehm (1993), a political scientist from Florida Atlantic University, who spoke primarily about the US experience, and Calvin Waller (1993), a retired African-American lieutenant general, who argued against the relevance of both the experience of foreign nations and the experience of racial integration in the U.S. Army. Moskos (1993), like LTG Waller, argued against the relevance of the experience of foreign militaries for the United States, and suggested that the American media painted a more positive picture of sexual orientation integration overseas than was warranted. I noted, among other findings, that Canada and Australia allowed open service by gays, that the UK regards homosexuality as incompatible with military service but has few discharges on that basis, that most of our NATO allies do not exclude homosexuals on the basis of policy, that France as a Catholic country regarded sexual behavior as a matter between a soldier and his priest, and that nowhere had there been major problems due to sexual orientation integration (Segal 1993a). Much to my surprise, the Washington Post on May 5 reported that Senator Kennedy, with whom I thought I agreed, had complained to Senator Nunn that my remarks were anti-Catholic (Evans and Novack 1993).

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