Defense: Marching Out of The Closet

By NANCY GIBBS

For 13 years in the Army and Army Reserve, Captain Dusty Pruitt, an ordained minister, taught soldiers to defend themselves against chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Her expertise could have been vital in the war against Saddam Hussein. But during Operation Desert Storm, Pruitt was neither protecting nor ministering to soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Her battleground was the Ninth Circuit Court in California, where she was busy fighting to overturn the Army's 1986 decision to discharge her because she is a lesbian. "It's sad," she says, "that the military wastes time bothering people about what they do in their private lives rather than what they do on duty."

In the U.S. military, few patterns are as enduring as the habit of barring qualified men and women from serving their country when they are needed, on the grounds that they are not wanted. Over the centuries, the brass have used strikingly similar arguments to bar racial minorities, women and homosexuals from marching into battle with white heterosexual males.

The presence of these outsiders, officials have warned, would risk security, weaken discipline and jeopardize the chain of command. In 1941 a special committee wrote an impassioned letter to the Secretary of the Navy pleading that he consider "the close and intimate conditions of life aboard ship, the necessity for the highest possible degree of unity and esprit-de-corps, and the requirements of morale," before allowing black seamen to fight alongside white sailors.

Under the weight of justice and reason, these barriers have fallen one by one. The armed services were integrated by Harry Truman in 1948. Two weeks ago, the Senate voted to allow female pilots to fly in battle, though women soldiers are barred from serving in infantry combat units. But the discriminatory language and attitudes still echo when it comes to gays and lesbians. According to the Department of Defense, "homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission." The prohibition applies not only to those who admit to homosexual activity, but also to those who merely profess homosexual inclinations.

The Pentagon found its rationale under severe attack last week when the Advocate, a Los Angeles gay magazine, claimed that a prominent Defense Department official was homosexual. The Advocate said that while it does not generally condone "outing," it wanted to call attention to the hypocrisy of the Pentagon's policy on gays. Despite their fine performance in the war, nearly 1,000 gay and lesbian soldiers have been investigated and discharged this year. The flurry of criticism has Pentagon officials squirming to justify a policy whose existence and enforcement seem so at odds with the realities of American society.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was in no mood to defend the ban, calling it "an old chestnut" that he inherited from previous Administrations. But he also said he would make no move to overturn it. When asked how he could retain a high-ranking aide who is allegedly gay while forcing the dismissal of many homosexuals from the uniformed services, Cheney invoked a confusing double standard. Gays, he explained, could serve in civilian jobs, where they would not necessarily pose a security risk. Yet a closet homosexual with access to & classified information would surely be more vulnerable to blackmail than a lowly enlisted man.

Officials fall back on the notion that allowing homosexuals to serve on ships or in the trenches would undermine the services' order and morale. Strangely enough, that rationale seems to apply only in peacetime. When Operation Desert Storm was launched, the Pentagon suspended most investigations of suspected homosexuals because they were needed on the front lines. Hundreds of admitted gay soldiers and reservists went off to the gulf. In some cases they were told that once the fighting was over, they would face discharge if they made it back home.

To gay and lesbian soldiers, the Pentagon prohibition reflects only deep- seated prejudice. "It's based on the assumption that all homosexuals are sex maniacs and somehow incapable of acting maturely," says Joe Steffan, a star student who resigned from the Naval Academy in 1987 two weeks before final exams, after his superiors heard that he was gay. According to Allan Berube, author of Coming Out Under Fire, 100,000 to 200,000 of the 2 million members of the U.S. armed forces are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Most elude detection by being discreet. "The question is not, 'What happens if we let gays in the military?' " says Berube. "At least 99% stay and serve."

The effort to weed them out can be brutally effective. In January 1943, on the recommendations of military psychiatrists who redefined homosexuality as a medical disorder rather than a criminal activity, the armed forces decreed that gays could be discharged simply for having homosexual tendencies. Since then, between 80,000 and 100,000 gays and lesbians have been ousted from the military.

In some cities near military bases, vice-squad detectives routinely help military police hunt down soldiers at gay and lesbian bars. Interrogations can last 12 hours, during which suspects are threatened with exposure to their parents, dishonorable discharge, and in the case of some lesbians, loss of custody of their children. Many suspects are pressured to reveal the names of other gay servicemen and -women. The interrogators, says Bridget Wilson of the Military Law Task Force in San Diego, which helps defend gay and lesbian service members, "are routinely dishonest, routinely incompetent and routinely lie to and terrorize service members in an attempt to get them to name other names."

Women are much more likely to come under fire than men, gay rights advocates charge, in part because the presence of women in the services has never been fully accepted. Wilson thinks the greater discharge rates of lesbians reflects the belief that "women in the military are thought to be either whores or dykes. So if you're not a whore you must be a dyke." Though any hint of homosexual activity means close scrutiny, gay military personnel say a good deal of wayward heterosexual activity is tolerated, even tacitly approved, by the military hierarchy. At the end of the gulf war, a Nevada brothel called the Mustang Ranch offered free passes to returning soldiers. "For some reason," says Wilson, "going to a whorehouse in their dress blues is not a problem."

By and large, the presence of gay soldiers is not a major issue within the ranks. Younger soldiers tend to view the prohibition as a relic of bygone bigotry. "People have asked me, 'How would you feel if you were in the same trench as a gay person?' " says Aric Nissen, 20, a University of Minnesota junior and political-science major enrolled in ROTC. "My response is that I feel it's one more person we could use to help us get out of the trench." Joe Steffan found that while homophobic jokes were standard fare at Annapolis, "a lot of that is a facade. During my last few days, people I barely knew were coming up to me, shaking my hand and saying, 'I'm really sorry this is happening, and I really don't agree with this policy,' and I was stunned at how much understanding was underneath that facade of homophobia."

John Gwynn, 31, says that even before he resigned his commission, he felt most of his fellow officers on his nuclear submarine knew that he lived a double life. The submarine corps is highly educated, he notes, "and that seems to fight the ignorance." Of the 160 men on his boat, Gwynn suspects that at least five were known to be gay. But he felt that he was safe from being forced out of the closet. "It's different for officers -- you're one of the boys, and ((the officers)) can't deny that they liked you. The sub is less anonymous and more like a club. As long as they weren't told, it didn't become an ugly incident."

But many gay soldiers continue to play it safe, lying about their sexual preference, fabricating heterosexual lovers, laughing at gay slurs, even entering into camouflage marriages. "It was frightening and horrible having to watch yourself all the time," recalls Dusty Pruitt. "The closet is a horrible place to be, and the military is in a deep closet."

Even before the gulf war, there were some stirrings for change from within the military establishment. Two years ago, the Pentagon commissioned a study that concluded that the antigay policy was irrational. The report, which never got beyond draft form, was rejected as "technically flawed" and for exceeding its authority, but the results were leaked by sympathetic Congressmen. A second report, which was never submitted, found that gay soldiers were less likely to drink, take drugs, or have disciplinary problems than nongay soldiers.

Some high-ranking officials may be ready for a change. After Mary Ann Humphrey, an Army Reserve captain, was discharged for being a lesbian, she wrote a book called My Country, My Right to Serve and sent a copy to General Calvin Waller, who was General Norman Schwarzkopf's deputy in the gulf war. "I trust that you and all of the other individuals who have experienced such discrimination will one day have your day in court," he wrote back. "It appears that society is about to accept that every person should have the freedoms and privileges that are granted under our great Constitution. Keep the faith!"

The pressure is also growing among organizations that do business with the military. Major college groups have urged that the policy be reviewed, after ROTC cadets were refused their commissions when they admitted to their superiors that they were gay. Faculty members have discovered that they can be denied military research grants if they come under suspicion of homosexuality during security-clearance investigations.

The policy can be overturned only by an act of Congress, a decision by the Secretary of Defense or a Supreme Court ruling. So far, the court has upheld the ban in all the cases it has agreed to hear, and despite public support for reversal, few politicians seem ready to take up the cause. Nonetheless, last week's furor revived a basic question: Can any country with volunteer armed forces afford to exclude talented people on the basis of fear?

With reporting by Scott Brown/Los Angeles, Tom Curry/New York and Bruce van Voorst/Washington