Aspin Pursuing Compromise on Gays in Military

Defense Secretary Les Aspin said Sunday that he hopes to craft a compromise between military commanders and gay-rights groups to clear the way for an end to the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.

Although Aspin said that President Clinton is determined to keep a campaign promise to permit gays and lesbians to take their place in the ranks, he said that the Administration must move deliberately to overcome military and congressional opposition that could sink the plan.

“The proposal is (to) take six months and see whether we can do it,” Aspin said. He conceded that if Congress were to vote on the issue today, the ban would be retained by an overwhelming margin.

Interviewed on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Aspin drew a careful distinction between the President’s theoretical right, as commander in chief, to prohibit discrimination against homosexuals and the political difficulty of putting such a measure into effect.

“If Bill Clinton were to write an executive order today eliminating the ban on homosexuality in the military, Congress could tomorrow vote a piece of legislation to restore the ban,” he said.

That puts pressure on gay-rights groups to compromise, he noted.

On the other hand, Aspin added, he hopes to persuade military commanders and their backers on Capitol Hill that it would be a mistake for them to overplay their hand. Sooner or later, he predicted, the courts will rule that discrimination against gays is unconstitutional, and the services then would have to accept homosexuals “without having a chance to control it at all.”

“So I think that the pressures on both sides to come to some kind of agreement, some kind of accommodation are real and it is on that basis that I think we can work something out,” he said.

Aspin said his strategy calls for conferring with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military commanders on the details of how the services could go about admitting homosexuals without, for the time being, negotiating about whether the ban should be lifted.

“People need to look at how this thing is going to be implemented and how it’s going to work and say, ‘OK, I can live with that’ or ‘I can’t,’ ” he said.

Clinton meets today with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the issue. Aspin failed to change any minds during a similar meeting of his own last week with the top military commanders.

It is far from certain that Clinton and Aspin will be able to channel the discussion from the merits of lifting the ban to the details of implementation. However, Aspin confirmed that he wrote a confidential memo to Clinton last week advising the President to refuse to negotiate with the military chiefs on the basic issue while offering to confer on methods of implementation.

For instance, Aspin said, the President is prepared to impose a strict new standard of conduct designed to prevent the presence of gays and lesbians from disrupting military discipline. He did not spell out the details, but presumably such a code would prohibit unwanted sexual overtures and ban open displays of affection while on duty.

“I’m convinced that, even had Bill Clinton not made the pledge or even if George Bush had been reelected, we’d be dealing with this issue of gays in the military sometime during this four-year period,” Aspin said. “The courts would force it on us. . . . I have no doubt that we would be doing it anyway because of what’s going on.”