Clinton to Stress Conduct as Key for Gays in Military

In the summer of 1990, bands of young Marines stationed less than a mile from the Capitol found a new outlet for their youthful energies: They would cruise down to Remington’s, a gay bar in a Capitol Hill neighborhood, taunt patrons of the bar and, on occasion, beat them up.

As the attacks escalated, representatives of Washington’s gay and lesbian community met with then-Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Alfred M. Gray Jr. In a bid to make peace with their military neighbors, they offered to give Marines sensitivity training about homosexuals. Gray and his senior advisers nixed the proposal, telling the gay activists that such sessions would likely be used to recruit enlisted Marines to a homosexual lifestyle.

That is the legacy of fear and mistrust President-elect Bill Clinton faces as he moves toward lifting the military’s 11-year-old prohibition against homosexuals in uniform.

Unequivocally committed to ending the ban and aware of military leaders’ passionate opposition, Clinton suggested Thursday that his approach will focus on conduct: permitting gays to serve openly in the armed forces as long as their conduct does not conflict with the good order and efficiency of the military.

But reasonable as Clinton’s approach may seem, it may encounter problems both from the military and from elements of the gay community. The problem lies in defining what conduct would conflict with good order and efficiency.

Ask a gay activist what conduct would be unacceptable, and he or she will cite the assaults at the Navy’s Tailhook Assn. convention, where Navy men are alleged to have fondled and groped civilian and Navy women. Clinton also cited the Tailhook charges on Thursday.

“That’s what we’re asking for, is for gays and lesbians to be held to as high standards of conduct as all service members are--nothing more, nothing less,” said Robert Bray of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

But ask a senior military leader what conduct would be unacceptable, and he is likely to have one view for heterosexuals and another for gays. A pat on the back between two males could be a harmless gesture between heterosexual men but could be interpreted as an inappropriate sexual overture by a gay serviceman.

“A lot of people will consider the conduct of straight people perfectly acceptable, but if you show me that you’re gay, you’re sexually harassing me,” said Jerry Coleman, a gay who piloted B-52 bombers for seven years before leaving the Air Force in 1980.

Further, for some gay activists, Clinton’s approach may smack too much of deference to military leaders, whose oft-stated prejudices may be allowed to stand in the way of gays’ full integration into the armed forces.

For gays, the whole point of their years of political struggle--and their heavy support for candidate Clinton--has been to escape from worry about whether others could continue to deny them opportunities solely on account of their lifestyle. There are concerns that Clinton’s willingness to listen to the complaints of military leaders will encourage the services to continue discriminating against gays under the guise of enforcing broadly worded military laws against fraternization and unbecoming conduct, and more specific statutes against sodomy.

“What we’re concerned about is implementation,” said William Waybourn, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political organization supporting homosexual candidates for office. “Just as issuing an executive order against discrimination against blacks didn’t do it, this won’t necessarily either. We’ll have to go through a generational thing.”

Mary Newcombe, an attorney for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a gay-rights organization, said: “If the military is permitted to use its existing attitudes and laws to act on its existing prejudice against gays, then the rescission of the ban has simply rechanneled the oppression. If that’s the effect, then we’ve failed. . . . What we’re talking about is selective enforcement, and everyone in the movement is concerned about that.”

As Clinton contemplates lifting the military’s prohibition against homosexuals, he will take on a culture that is deeply rooted in the military’s macho warrior ethic and in its desire to maintain morale and discipline under the most adverse wartime conditions. Ironically, his order may test the very military discipline that virtually all military leaders warn will suffer if openly homosexual men and women are permitted to serve in the military’s ranks.

“I’ve heard a lot of people have warned that morale and discipline will break down,” said the Brookings Institution’s Lawrence Korb, a senior defense official in the Ronald Reagan Administration. “Well, that’s the job of the military’s leaders, to ensure that morale and discipline are maintained. Now, they’ve got to learn how they’re going to work with homosexuals in their ranks and prepare for that, rather than allow people to proceed on the basis of their prejudices.”

But even Clinton’s conciliatory words Thursday may not prevent many resignations among the service’s top ranks, military people said. Clinton’s own senior military adviser, retired Adm. William Crowe, told reporters Wednesday: “I didn’t necessarily agree with the governor” when Crowe was asked what he thought about the proposed policy change. He added that he has told the governor to move “carefully . . . and I wasn’t joking when I said carefully.”

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is dead set against it.

“It is difficult in a military setting where there is no privacy, where you don’t get choice of association, where you don’t get choice of where you live, to introduce a group of individuals who are proud, brave, loyal, good Americans but who favor a homosexual lifestyle,” Powell said in congressional testimony earlier this year. “I think it would be prejudicial to good order and discipline to try to integrate that in the current military structure.”

But although military leaders also warn of recruitment and retention problems--and even riots--among younger service members if gays are allowed in, most military officers acknowledge that the services have no evidence supporting their concerns.

Asked whether the military has any survey data to back up their warnings, one military officer noted: “We don’t do much surveying, actually. Our view generally is that if we wanted our troops to have opinions on such matters, we would issue them.”

Issuing opinions, many gay activists said, is what Clinton must do if he really wants to make good on his promise to open the military to gays. Through regular training like the sessions on sexual harassment that have followed the Tailhook scandal, the activists said, the military must use its extraordinary powers to enforce desirable conduct and, ultimately, desirable attitudes.

“There obviously needs to be ‘Gay 101’ training on homophobia to shatter myths about gay people--many of them perpetuated by military leaders themselves--that gay people can’t control their sexuality,” said Bray of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “We’re not going to see gay pride parades through the barracks, or people flaunting their sexuality. We’re going to see thousands of military persons doing what so many gay people have done quietly for years: serving their country proudly and adhering to the military’s rules.”

What Clinton Plans to Do

At his news conference, President-elect Clinton promised: To lift the ban on homosexuals in the military, but only after consulting “with a lot of people about what our options are, including people who may disagree with me about the ultimate merits.” To lift the Bush Administration ban on abortion counseling at federally funded clinics. To revise Bush’s Haiti policy and allow refugees now summarily returned to their country to petition for political refugee status. To impose the strictest ethics guidelines of any Administration in history. To provide an investment tax credit for new factories and equipment, which he predicted would create some 500,000 jobs in his first year. To offer a middle-class tax cut and accelerate spending on roads and bridges to create more jobs. To chart a security and foreign policy that “keeps the defense of this country the strongest in the world,” despite reductions. Source: Times wire services