Dornan Aims to Make Pentagon Gay Ban a Law

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) took on homosexuals and President Clinton Wednesday as he introduced the first legislation that would give the force of law to the Pentagon policy barring gays from military service.

Republican strategists said Dornan’s legislation is intended to act as a lightning rod on the gay-military issue. “It forces the issue here in Congress,” said one top Republican congressional aide, giving veterans and others who support the ban a focal point for their lobbying efforts.

“Clinton should understand that there are those of us in Congress who will not stand by while he turns the Defense Department into a social laboratory just so he can satisfy one of the many special interest groups that supported his candidacy,” Dornan said.

Dornan’s move opens up a second front in the struggle over gay rights and military service. Senate Republicans already had threatened to amend pending legislation to keep in place the ban on gays in the military.

Although it is unlikely that the Democrats who control Congress will give Dornan a hearing on his bill, its introduction gives the Air Force veteran a highly visible battlement from which to attack Clinton’s plan to open up the military to homosexuals, a promise Clinton made during the presidential campaign.

Reaction from gay rights organizations was swift. “Congress should stay out of it,” said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the largest and oldest gay legal defense groups in the nation.

“It’s not surprising that Dornan is doing this,” Cathcart added. “The man is a crackpot. You don’t have to look very far in his record to see that his homophobia outweighs his common sense.”

But Dornan, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and one of Clinton’s harshest critics, said it makes perfect sense to make permanent the policy that bans homosexuals in the military.

“The current Pentagon policy was crafted carefully over decades for very good reasons,” Dornan said. “Allowing homosexuals into the armed forces would cause great morale and discipline problems and . . . impede the military’s primary mission of achieving victory on the battlefield.”

While those arguments are rejected outright by advocates of homosexual rights, they have resonated with many members of Congress, including prominent Democrats. Among them is Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who strongly reiterated his support for the ban in a Senate speech on Wednesday.

A Dornan aide said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) is expected to introduce companion legislation within the next few days on his side of the Capitol. Dornan and Dole had consulted on the matter, aides said.

Senate rules make it much easier to force a vote on a given issue because senators have broad authority to tack on amendments to virtually any piece of legislation, however unrelated the parent bill is to the proposed amendment.

Among the co-sponsors of Dornan’s bill are Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), who joined Dornan last year in a series of late-night speeches on the House floor in which they attacked Clinton for failing to serve in the military during the Vietnam War. They also suggested that Clinton may have been used by the Soviet secret police during a student trip to Moscow in 1969-70.

Other members of the Orange County congressional delegation generally backed the ban on gay service in the military but did not universally commit themselves to supporting Dornan’s legislation.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who stayed out of the military during the Vietnam War because of a high school football injury, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be free to keep the ban in place.

“I generally believe the military should make its own rules and regulations about who can serve. . . . I was never in the military, and I think it’s presumptuous for politicians to tell the military how to make personnel decisions,” Rohrabacher added.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), who represents South County, is a Navy veteran who said he would support legislation to make the ban on gays statutory. “The main concern I have is not gay rights or civil rights,” Packard said. “I think the real question is how the military can best operate.”

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who had a student deferment during the Vietnam era, signed on as a co-sponsor of Dornan’s bill.

Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar), who represents Yorba Linda and adjacent parts of northern Orange County, released a statement in which he said, “I am disappointed that President Clinton has chosen to make this very emotional issue a top priority.” He added that he is “inclined to listen” to the expert advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and suggested that Clinton should not proceed with an executive order overturning the ban.