Another Wall of Prejudice Starts to Fall

The nation’s armed services are widely touted as a true meritocracy, a place where Americans can “be all that (they) can be.” Yet the military has not been exempt from the same biases and prejudices that poison other institutions.

The military has been permitted to institutionalize prejudices about race, gender and sexual-orientation; it has, during various points in its history, systematically excluded certain groups from its ranks, contrary to the essence of a meritocracy. Gradually the cumulative weight of justice, reason and hypocrisy is causing these barriers to fall. Monday’s decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the U.S. Army’s blanket policy excluding and dismissing gays and lesbians is the latest in a series of such fair-minded and laudable steps.

Although black soldiers have fought with distinction in every American war, official military policy long kept them in separate units with second-class treatment and pay. Not until 1948 did President Harry S. Truman issue an executive order that began to dismantle formal segregation in the armed forces.

Women have also long served in the military but were restricted to duties considered ancillary, such as nursing. With the end of the draft in 1973, the services opened up many more job classifications to women while still banning them from combat roles. The distinction between combat and noncombat jobs, fuzzy at best, was blurred beyond recognition by the stellar record of the women serving in the Persian Gulf War.

Similarly, the Army’s exclusion of openly gay men and lesbians springs from undisguised homophobia. Without assessing the performance of gay and lesbian soldiers, the Defense Department maintains that “the presence” of homosexuals “seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission.”

The appellate decision requires the Army to now present specific justification for its policy and may signal the end of the military’s 48-year-old practice of banning someone simply for being homosexual. The case resulted from the discharge of Army Capt. Dusty Pruitt, now a minister in Long Beach, after she disclosed her homosexuality.

Since World War II the services have tried to ferret out gays and lesbians in their midst. But the policy has succeeded only in driving an estimated 200,000 gay and bisexual soldiers underground and to perpetuate unsupportable discrimination.

“Private biases may be outside the reach of the law,” the court noted, “but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.” We agree.