While the Pentagon loses millions by dismissing well-trained gay soldiers because of their sexuality, they’ve also been spending money — since 1957 — researching whether gay soldiers have any effect on military preparedness. And the resounding answer? From the military’s own research? NO.
That’s what Col. Om Prakash’s much-buzzed-about article in this month’s Joint Force Quarterly reveals, notes Shauna Miller in The Atlantic. Looking at more than five decades of the American military’s own delving into the issue:
The DoD has funded studies on the impact of gay servicemembers as far back as 1957, when the Navy’s Crittenden Report found “no factual data” to support the idea that they posed a greater security risk than heterosexual personnel. Straight officers boasting secrets due to “feelings of inadequacy” were a realer threat, it found. Despite these findings, the report recommended no changes to dismissal policies, for a reason that would define the department’s stance on open service into the 21st century: “The service should not move ahead of civilian society nor attempt to set substantially different standards in attitude or action with respect to homosexual offenders.”
In 1988, the Defense Personnel Security Research Center — a DoD agency — conducted its own study on gay soldiers to determine whether their service under current policies created security risks, for instance in terms of blackmail. It also discussed, based on the military and wider social data available, whether the military’s policies were sustainable. The study returned again and again to the facts of conduct: “Studies of homosexual veterans make clear that having a same gender or an opposite-gender orientation is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left or right-handed.”
[…] The [Government Accountability Office] report itself turned a harsh light on the DoD. It found that existing policy was “based solely upon concerns about homosexuality itself,” and criticized the department for not conducting hard research to support its practices. “In addition,” the report said, “professional psychiatric, psychological, sociological associations and other experts familiar with the research conducted on homosexuality in general disagree with the basic rationale behind DoD’s policy.”
The latest data Prakash cites comes from a 1993 RAND Corp. study commissioned under President Clinton to determine a “practical” strategy on gays in the military. It pulled together the broadest range of data, including opinion of active-duty officers and attitudes of foreign militaries with openly gay servicemembers. Its straightforward conclusion supported the previous 40 years of findings: Policy should set equal expectations of conduct for all servicemembers, and “emphasis should be placed on behavior … not on teaching tolerance or sensitivity.”
And it’s not like there wasn’t (racial) history to go on:
The [Defense Personnel Security Research Center] study also owned the lessons of racial integration: “The intensity of prejudice against homosexuals may be of the same order as the prejudice against blacks in 1948, when the military was ordered to integrate,” it found. “The order to integrate blacks was first met with stout resistance by traditionalists in the military establishment. Dire consequences were predicted for maintaining discipline, building group morale, and achieving military organizational goals. None of these predictions of doom has come true.”
The Pentagon rejected a draft of the report and its follow-up, claiming it exceeded its mandate. Excerpts from the unpublished studies were released in a 1992 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) 10-year report on the Pentagon’s policies toward gay servicemembers as Congress debated the guidelines that would become DADT.
We’d just love to hear how much more “research” and “studying” and “planning” the Defense Department still needs now that everything has been laid out, explicitly clear, for all to see. Because rest assured, it’s coming.
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Peter
With all the Military’s brilliant work on these studies, it’s a wonder that we have won any war.
Brian NJ
More evidence that all the complaints about all the work that needs to be done and how hard a simple repeal of DADT is are FALSE. They don’t want to repeal it, because they are afraid of the midterms.
Tommy
I’m not sure I get you, Peter.
The military reached the same conclusion two decades ago that GLBT activists have been fighting hard for all this time. The problem is politics, not the military.
It’s also interesting to note that the military’s own report puts sexual orientation as less of an operations-critical issue as is what hand you use to write with.
Band lefties from the military, post-haste!
B
They do in fact need some lead time for planning. Whatever training and procedures they have regarding sexual harassment would have been written under the assumption that it is men harassing females or vice versa. The hard part is not the change to the wording to allow for a few more combinations, but in finding all the spots where the wording has to be changed – with the government’s penchant for long, boring documents, it is no doubt like finding a needle in a haystack.
They have to update the manuals, make sure the trainers know the new material, develop tests to make sure the new material was actually digested, and then make sure the troops are actually trained. All they really have to tell people is that (a) harassing gays is not OK, (b) sexual harassment of any kind is not OK, (c) that sexual orientation does not effect performance, and (d) the military version of Benjamin Frankin’s quip that, if we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately. Unfortunately, telling people that can take hundreds of pages of documentation: brevity is not a military virtue, incomprehensible acronyms being the main exception.
Brian NJ
The can change the manuals after the policy is rescinded. There is no reason for delay.
Peter
Tommy—My point was that the military has known since forever that gays present no problem to them doing their job. So why did they decide to take the most restrictive interpretation of the DADT when they knew that it would restrict their ability to fight the war????
twee insipid indie bitch
Screw the military. If you join, you’re an idiot, gay or straight.
twee insipid indie bitch
I swear I despise how gay rights has been wrapped up in two things I despise most : marriage and the military…..militaristic masculinist controls…..eck…..fuck, i’m done.
hephaestion
The Pentagon has steadily produced pro-gay studies showing that gays make great soldiers ever since the early 1980’s.
When Clinton tried to end the ban on gay soldiers he had a shitload of Pentagon research in favor of letting gays serve openly.
It was only the Republican politicians and that fool Sam Nunn that kept gays from serving freely and openly.
tjr101
OMG… these people needed to do research over several decades spending millions of dollars to come up with this?
Now I know it’s a personal decision for someone to join the army (patriotism, benefits…etc) but come on, why would you join this type of culture. The military for all it’s advances is loaded with some very backward, narrow minded people.
Jack
I have to question whether the military deserves gays.
B
Brian NJ wrote, “The can change the manuals after the policy is rescinded. There is no reason for delay.” They know the policy is going to change pretty soon and one thing they are used to doing is to make contingency plans. Changing the policy immediately would not immediately let gays in – the military would simply state that they need some lead time for the manuals and procedures to be updated, and to complete any necessary “sensitivity training” so the new policy will be a success. They’d also say they needed time to figure out the lead time. Hopefully the Obama administration is quietly getting all that in place in advance.
Giiiiiiiiiii
That is very predictable. Some guys, i mean gays pretend to be a man for them to feel close to those hunks.