Courtesy Photo
There was far more opposition within the British military to allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly than there now is within the U.S. armed forces, yet still only three people left the British military. When “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed in the U.S., Aaron Belkin contends the blowback will be miniscule to nonexistent. Here, gay, lesbian, and transgender members of the British Royal Navy march in the 2007 London Gay Pride parade.
Doing Away with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
How UCSB’s Palm Center Is Winning the War Against Gay Discrimination in the Military
Thursday, July 15, 2010
It’s only a matter of time before the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing gays in the military is buried once and for all. When that day comes, Aaron Belkin’s fingerprints will be all over the shovel.
For the past 12 years, the political science professor has run the Palm Center at UCSB, a small think tank of scholars and lawyers focused on the fate of sexual minorities within the military. The situation, they soon found, was cruelly absurd and gratuitously self-defeating. At the same time the United States was waging two full-blown wars across the globe, the military was kicking out nearly 14,000 servicemen and -women for violating the dangerously nebulous terms of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” including more than 50 skilled translators — many fluent in Arabic — who had not securely locked themselves in the closet. In some cases, mere possession of a k.d. lang album or a Dinah Shore Golf Classic poster was sufficient cause to launch internal investigations. Meanwhile, the American military — strapped for qualified personnel and forced to relax admission qualifications — allowed more than 4,000 convicted felons to enlist.
The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy first arose in 1993 as a compromise between the Clinton White House and Republican leaders, the Christian Coalition, and key Southern Democrats, who were threatening a total ban on gays in the military. Back then, such high-profile players as General Colin Powell and Senator Sam Nunn argued that allowing out-of-the-closet homosexuals in the military would prove detrimental to the “unit cohesion” required by military discipline.
Courtesy PalmCenter.org
Aaron Belkin, of UCSB’s Palm Center
Over time, both Powell and Nunn would come to disavow that argument, but they didn’t have much of a choice. The research unearthed by Belkin and other scholars with the Palm Center exposed that there was no factual basis for the “unit cohesion” argument. More damningly, they found there never had been. If anything, they found that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was far more corrosive on military morale due to the capricious persecution that ensued. Even more startling, the Palm Center also revealed that 25 other modern militaries had allowed openly gay men and women to serve without suffering any loss of morale or cohesion.
As think tanks go, the Palm Center consistently punches way above its weight. Although steadily gaining credibility with the nation’s military brass over the years, the center’s most dramatically effective relationships are with news outlets and D.C. politicians. Belkin and his former Palm Center colleague Nathaniel Frank have been interviewed so many times by National Public Radio that listeners could be excused for thinking they work there. Likewise, they’ve made themselves abundantly available to members of Congress and, more importantly, to key legislative staffers. And while their point of view has always been evident, their stock-in-trade is the quality of their scholarship.
By Paul Wellman (file)
Earlier, Belkin described Barack Obama’s leadership on gay rights as “anemic.” Now, he praises the president for making repeal happen.
To the extent Belkin can savor the imminent repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he’s quick to credit the interventions of President Barack Obama, who vowed to end the policy in this year’s State of the Union speech. Ironically, lawyers working for Obama’s Justice Department will be opposing a constitutional challenge to “don’t ask, don’t tell” taking place this week in federal court in Riverside, California. That challenge was filed by the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay members of the GOP on whose behalf Belkin will testify as an expert witness. The Justice Department is not expected to rebut Belkin or other experts called by the Log Cabin Republicans. Instead, its attorneys will argue that members of Congress, however misguided, had a rational basis to believe the policy would further the objectives of military morale at the time they voted.
While Belkin was barred from discussing specifics of that case, he was willing to share some of his thoughts on “don’t ask, don’t tell” last week in a telephone interview.
A whole lot has happened this past year with “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Where are we now and what’s next? We are probably going to win, which means that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is going to be repealed and gays will probably be allowed to serve openly. The main hurdle to an inclusive policy was getting legislation through the Senate. And the White House, along with Senator [Carl] Levin and Senator [Joe] Lieberman, figured out an ingenious strategy to move forward … They were able to attach an amendment to a must-pass bill, the budget bill. It’s going to be impossible for the Republicans to strip the amendment from the bill because they need 60 votes. The bill is going to pass. The House of Representatives passed the amendment with the exact same language, so the amendment will become law. The amendment says that the Pentagon is studying “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and that once that study is done and the president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the secretary of defense have certified that repeal will not harm the military, then “don’t ask, don’t tell” will be repealed.
I heard Senator John McCain was threatening to filibuster. He said a few years ago that the moment military leadership said they wanted a repeal to happen, then he would favor a repeal. Well, sure enough, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs a few months ago said that gays should be allowed to serve openly, and McCain did a flip-flop. He’s on a sinking ship. It’s not credible that he’s going to filibuster the budget bill unless he somehow wants the troops to not get paid. He’s facing a challenge from a Republican more extreme than he is, so he’s trying to pump up his homophobic credentials to appeal to his base.
The Pentagon recently sent a survey to 400,000 troops about changing the policy, but many in the gay community are urging gay troops not to answer because they might risk their careers. We are not legal experts. We say there is minimal risk for participation, but it’s not a case of zero risk. We leave it for the servicemember to decide.
Why has the Palm Center criticized parts of the survey? The questions being asked are deeply problematic, if not offensive. Can you imagine asking servicemembers about any other identity group, like “How would your spouse feel about being housed on base next to a Chinese family?” or “Would you take orders from a Catholic officer?” “Would you share a tent with a Jewish soldier?” The point is there are some questions you poll the troops about, and some you don’t. We don’t poll the troops about whether they want to go to war. The reason why we don’t poll the troops about “Would you share a tent with a Jewish soldier?” is because asking that question constitutes the minority group as second-class citizens.
The other problem with the study is that it’s premised on a false pretense. [Military leaders] have said, “We don’t have any objective research about how we should manage a repeal process and, therefore, we need to spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars and a year studying the issue.” That is flat wrong. There is actually a mountain of evidence. You want to snap your fingers and do it all at once. You do not want to spend a year. That’s what’s best for the military. But that’s not where we are at politically, hence the study.
The Palm Center and you have taken intense heat from gay activists for being too willing to compromise. The compromise is half a loaf, and there are many people in the gay community who want the full loaf, and who have said some not-so-nice things about me and the Palm Center because of our arguments about the benefits of taking half a loaf. We stand very much behind what we said. We don’t think it is politically possible to get full repeal at this time. We’ve taken that heat, yes.
When you talk about the compromise, what specifically are you talking about? The compromise includes two important elements. One is that repeal will not happen now, but only after the president and military leadership certify that they are ready for repeal. No one really has much of a problem with that.
The piece of the compromise people have a problem with is that the amendment will not impose a requirement upon the Pentagon to implement nondiscrimination. So, in other words, the Pentagon will have statutory legal discretion to implement whatever policy it wants, whether that’s integration or discrimination. We are not afraid of the compromise. It’s not perfect, but pretty darn good. That’s because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, have made it very clear that they want gays to serve openly and equally. So we have every confidence that once the law is repealed, good regulations will be put in place, and those good regulations will basically be tamper-proof if future administrations try to make trouble. We think that’s a victory.
By Courtesy Photo
Belkin (right) and the Palm Center have been unusually effective working with military brass like Retired Army Colonel George Reed (left) and Congressmember Lois Capps (center). Belkin described Capps as “the nicest member of Congress,” saying her personal contacts have proven invaluable in the push to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
In the 1990s, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was first introduced, Walter Capps was running for Congress. His campaign manager told me if I asked Walter about gays in the military during an interview, the interview would be over. Today, Walter’s wife, Lois Capps, is in Congress, and she’s very out front in support of repeal. What changed? We should talk about Congresswoman Capps. She’s incredibly strategic, but she also has this reputation as the nicest member of Congress, of all 535 members. She gets along with everybody. Because of her relationships on the Hill, she has been able to push this issue forward in many behind-the-scenes ways. She’s used her position to spread the word among members of Congress and talk to them privately on the importance of the issue. She gets no public credit for that … She’s just there at every step, literally every single step.
As to why attitudes have changed, it’s because, in part, of political leaders like Congresswoman Capps, who have talked about gay and lesbian issues in a very mainstream way. The issue has become more normalized over time, and that is why people are able to have conversations about it. At the same time, the cultural change is not only about political leaders. There have been a lot of important and brave grassroots heroes who have been working on the ground to try to help the public understand that homosexuality is not scary, and gay and lesbian people deserve their rights just like everybody else.
You once described President Obama’s approach to gay issues as “anemic,” but that was before he appointed a woman softball player to the Supreme Court. What are your thoughts now? I think the president has taken tremendous strides since I made that comment. Look at what he has done on “don’t ask, don’t tell” since that time. He inserted himself into a very messy congressional process and he, along with Senator Lieberman and Senator Levin, twisted arms on the Senate Armed Services Committee … The White House just pushed and pushed and pushed and then got the amendment through committee, and that took a lot of capital.
I’m struck by how little mojo the other side is showing on this one. Have they just given up? They know that they are on the wrong side of history. Depending on the polls, between 58 and 81 percent of the public supports the repeal. The majority of Republicans support repeal. The majority of churchgoers support repeal. The majority of old people support repeal. Ninety-one percent of young adults support repeal. Homophobes know that they lost, that they are on the wrong side of culture. They can see that the scare tactics they used have become less effective. It’s harder to scare the public about gay marriage and gays in the military.
In 1993, “gays in the military” was the biggest fundraising cash cow for the Christian right that they ever had. They raised tens of millions of dollars off this one, and coordinated a massive national lobbying campaign. This time, you have Republican leaders in the House like Buck McKeon sending letters to the Pentagon every now and then, but basically they are posturing. They know they lost.
You cite 25 countries where gays are now allowed to serve openly. Was there any blowback when the policies shifted? Nothing. The Brookings Institute and the Palm Center sponsored a conference on Allied military experiences last month. We had generals and commanders from around the world who said again and again that they thought disaster would ensue when policy changed, but that it was just not a big deal.
By Courtesy Photo
“People worship the military in this society,” said Belkin — shown at the Air Force Academy — explaining why the Palm Center has focused on the experience of sexual minorities in the armed forces.
How do you make the change? It’s not rocket science. You need two or three things. You need a single code of conduct that applies to all servicemembers, gay or straight, so hold everyone to the same standards. Our military already has such a code, so we don’t need anything there. We need leadership signals from the top that everybody is expected to work together. If you have those two things, then you are not going to have a problem.
In 1993, the generals argued that gays in the military would undermine what they described as “unit cohesion.” What have you learned about that? The claims about harming unit cohesion have always been a pretext for, whatever you want to call it, moral opposition of homosexuality or homophobia. But it’s never been about unit cohesion. The people who came up with the unit cohesion rationale recently confessed to my former colleague Nathaniel Frank [for research in his book Unfriendly Fire] that it’s based on nothing. There was no evidence at the time that gays undermined unit cohesion, and there was a lot of evidence that they don’t. The reason they used the unit cohesion rationale is because it sounded good. They didn’t want to go to Congress and say, “We don’t like gay people.”
How long have you spent studying this? Twelve years. I had been studying the military in graduate school, and I came out of the closet, and I was studying the military and realized there was a tremendous overlap between my military interests and my gay and lesbian interests.
What was your interest in the military? It’s probably been kind of a fascination/repulsion relationship. Ever since I was a kid, I had model airplanes in my attic, and I used to read the World Book Encyclopedia entries on all the wars. I was fascinated by the military and war, but never understood why anyone would join an organization where they’d have to kill someone. There has always been a contradiction lodged in the heart of my interest, and I don’t know why that contradiction is there, but that’s where I’ve been coming from for many years.
So is the military the biggest institution discriminating against gay people in the country? The military is the largest employer in the country. When the largest employer in the country fires you on the basis of who you are, then you can never really be a first-class citizen. For the most part, the rest of the culture has moved on. The federal government has moved on. The CIA allows gays to serve openly. All the other government agencies allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and the reason I focus on the military is because they don’t.
In addition, there has been a long-standing struggle in this country among groups who’ve been excluded from equal citizenship to struggle for their rights in the military. It happened with women, with Asian Americans, Irish, African Americans; even Jewish Americans, to some extent, have had to prove their loyalty as soldiers.
The reason we are talking about the military and not the post office or Amtrak or the Department of Agriculture is because this is a highly militarized society. People worship the military in this society, and often, I would say, worship the military uncritically. Regardless of what you think about that worship, the bottom line is that the reverence is there, and this society is extremely, highly militarized, and so the military becomes an important stage on which political dramas are played out.
Do you still have people in the military telling you, “To hell with your research, I still know what I know, and I know that if we have gay people in here, it’d be disruptive”? If you ask servicemembers what they think, about 30 percent will say they would like gays to serve openly, about 40 percent would say they don’t want gays to serve openly, and about 30 percent say they don’t care either way. Among those 40 percent who say they don’t want gays to serve, it’s a pretty small minority who feel strongly about it. There’s a lot more support in our military for repeal than there was in the British military when they repealed. About two-thirds of British and Canadian servicemembers said they would not work with gays.
And was that a problem? There were three people that resigned in each case.
Courtesy Palm Center
Here’s hoping: Dr. Aaron Belkin of UCSB’s Palm Center says that possible changes to the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy “may have a real impact on the daily lives of gay, lesbian, and bisexual military members.”
We’ve broken a great number of stories that help the public understand the cost of discrimination. For the last seven or eight years, we’ve been breaking stories about Arabic linguists being fired for being gay. Before we came along, there was just a conventional understanding in media coverage that, sure, “don’t ask, don’t tell” might be unfair, but discrimination is necessary for military readiness. We’ve done a great deal of research on that question and generated a lot of media coverage about our findings that, in fact, it’s discrimination that hurts the military.
We were also the group that first recognized we were not going to be able to get repeal all at once, and that if we kept holding out for repeal, we would end up getting nothing. There was a moment when the community was asking for a full-scale repeal, and the president was saying, “Look, I don’t have the votes in the Senate, leave me alone.” And he was right; he didn’t have the votes in the Senate. So his administration used conditional language not about when “don’t ask, don’t tell” would be repealed, but if it would be repealed. The issue kept flipping further and further on the back burner.
But we released a report that showed actually the president did not have to wait for Congress — he could simply sign an executive order suspending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and that would be the first step. That report got a tremendous amount of coverage and ended up generating a lot of heat. Once people realized that Obama could not continue to blame Congress, they started to blame him for “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and that played a role in kind of helping the White House start to move in an aggressive direction.
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Comments
This is nothing but a pot of gold for trial lawyers as we see thousands of discrimination suits filed against the Armed services.
1. Unemployment is at 22%.
2. The donks are deficit spending $5,000,000,000.00 (that's five billion for democrat voters) since Obama started his reign of incompetence.
3. It's day 84 of the oil spill and Obama's administration has still not let oil skimmers from other nations assist, let governors protect their coast, and has blacked out news coverage of this heinous failure of his.
But we need to get behind repealing DODT. This is what the super smart of the democrat party are working on.
jukin (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 10:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As someone who is against the wars in AfgPakRaq, even a blind mouse could see that repealing DODT is a necessary step in achieving and ensuring equality for all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation. To think that this somehow should be put on the back burner while other issues that require much more than the stroke of a pen are resolved is only a means of continued oppression itself.
EZK (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 10:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Barry Goldwater said it best: "You don't have to be straight to shott straight" :) henry
hank (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 10:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Let's look at Obama's war, Afghanistan, from October 2001 to January 2009, 625 American soldiers were killed. In 18 short months, Obama has nearly doubled that number to 1,124 Americans killed.
Where is code pink? These losses are worse than the Iraq war. Which by the way is going to be one of the few accomplishments of the Obama administration according to Joe Biden. Now using Bush's general that Obama called a liar, Petraeus. Democrats the party of total irony.
BUT the most important thing on our plate is DADT.
jukin (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 11:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey jukin, can I get some of whatever it is you're smoking?
And as a vet, I can tell you this Prof at UCSB had nothing what so ever at getting DODT removed. It's the DoD and the Pentagon who made this choice.
Changes in the military happen slowly and things transition over time, like DODT. First we just kicked you out with a Dishonorable Discharge if you were gay, then we moved to a "voluntarily" separation with a General Discharge, and now you get an Honorable Discharge. The logical next step in this process is to get rid of DODT, which is happening.
This is nothing to do with Obama, Bush or any other president. For those of you who like to bash the military, yet who have never served, you should really go get a clue. Try actually SERVING with your fellow men and women in uniform before you make blanket judgements about them or the officers who lead them.
How sad some of you are, really...
bronc (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 1:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)
"Earlier, Belkin described Barack Obama’s leadership on gay rights as 'anemic.' Now, he praises the president for making repeal happen. "
It only stands to reason that Obama would be supporting this. After all, he will need as many soldiers as possible to fight the war in Afghanistan which he has chosen to escalate. (An intent he has stated since about a month prior to his being chosen president--a fact his supporters don't seem to be discussing)
billclausen (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 2:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Jukin: "Where is code pink?"
Nowhere to be found, they got the "change" they wanted & now they're focusing on having a reason to exist. Kind of like the communist party after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Bronc: "This is nothing to do with Obama, Bush or any other president. For those of you who like to bash the military, yet who have never served, you should really go get a clue. Try actually SERVING with your fellow men and women in uniform before you make blanket judgements about them or the officers who lead them."
Ain't that the truth! All these "idealists" that believe "war is not the answer" have yet to answer a simple question: Then what is the answer? Appeasement doesn't work, locally (gangs) or globally (Iran, N. Korea, al-quaeda). Negotiating is a waste of time. What is the answer? Our fighting men & women deserve respect & I don't care if it's the 4 start general calling shots or the grunt in the trenches, they all deserve respect for doing something all these "idealists" couldn't do.
Bill Clausen: "(An intent he has stated since about a month prior to his being chosen president--a fact his supporters don't seem to be discussing)"
This goes back to the "code pink" thing I started out w/. They got the change they wanted, now it's other causes & coverups for the new admin :) henry
hank (anonymous profile)
July 15, 2010 at 3:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hank, spot on!
All are just fronts for the democrat party.
Where were all the feminist groups when Billy jeff Clinton was attacking women and raping them in the White House?
Not to be found. That was when my eyes opened up that the leftist groups don't really adhere to their positions if it endangers a leftist, big government agenda of the donks.
jukin (anonymous profile)
July 16, 2010 at 8:36 a.m. (Suggest removal)
jukin: the following link is interesting:
http://mw2.merriam-webster.com/dictio...
billclausen (anonymous profile)
July 20, 2010 at 3:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Thanks for this article Nick.
Few in SB know of the Palm Center's work or its national impact.
They have become quite the national power house tucked away at UCSB. The scholarly studies they've published would fill a library and has greatly advanced the movement to end DADT.
Aaron Belkin and Nathaniel Frank are rightly credited with focusing a laser on the issue, gathering documentary evidence and organizing heavy military brass for lifting the ban.
What is interesting is the reasons the radical right has fought this battle so fiercely. They know, as do we, the American public finds it distinctly un-American to deny rights to the very soldiers who proudly fight for the rights and freedoms the rest of us enjoy. Once discrimination falls in the military, societal discrimination will also fall. So it denies the radical right the ability to continue to dehumanize and demonize the gay community.
So this was their line in the sand. Unfortunately for them, the tide of history is washing it away.
It is true that Obama has been criticized for moving too cautiously given how his own Chair of the Jt Chiefs has called the policy discriminatory and counterproductive. Most of our Western and NATO allies already allow gays to serve openly. And our military already serves closely and depends upon them in Afganistan, Iraq and elsewhere. It is an issue the US continues to sorely lag behind in the industrialized world.
TerryLeftgoff (anonymous profile)
July 23, 2010 at 5:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)
"It's day 84 of the oil spill and Obama's administration has still not let oil skimmers from other nations assist, let governors protect their coast, and has blacked out news coverage of this heinous failure of his."-Jukin
Jukin,
Now that you've posted 40 or so comments (that have been mostly recycled variations of conservative talking points) I'm certain nobody here expects you to be accurate or reasonable but you might be interested to know that BP has been turning away skimmers for a couple of weeks now:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/21/...
Kingprawn (anonymous profile)
July 30, 2010 at 8:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)