Disruption Rare as Gays Have Been Integrated

For the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces is certain to weaken America’s military might--shattering morale, hastening the spread of AIDS among heterosexual troops, undercutting recruitment and forcing devoutly religious service members to resign.

Military leaders have cited those concerns and others in trying to block President Clinton’s effort to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians in the armed services, arguing that the military is not an appropriate setting for social experimentation.

Without question, the U.S. military is a unique organization, making direct comparison with other institutions or settings inevitably imprecise. Nonetheless, other segments of society here and abroad have confronted similar concerns in recent years as homosexuals were more openly integrated into various occupations and settings where they were previously shunned.

In those cases, interviews and research this week indicate that despite some initial controversy and unease, evidence of significant disruptions and conflicts is sparse.

The Joint Chiefs’ concerns are based on the opinions of longtime senior military officials and are widely shared throughout the services. But Air Force Lt. Col. Doug Hart, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said the Defense Department was aware of no studies or other forms of research to support those concerns. Among those concerns are:

Permitting gays to openly enter the military would destroy morale and undermine cohesion.

“It will really devastate military readiness (and) bring great tension into the military,” said Daniel Heimbach, outgoing deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower.

Countries that now allow homosexuals to serve in the military, such as Israel, Canada and the Netherlands, say they have not experienced such problems.

In Israel, where homosexuals have been allowed to serve in any capacity within the country’s armed forces since the nation was founded in 1948, no major problems have arisen, an embassy official said.

“It’s not an issue that’s on the agenda,” said embassy spokeswoman Ruth Yaron. “It’s never reached the level of public debate.”

Yaron said individual problems with gay soldiers or with those who react adversely to serving with homosexuals have cropped up but they “have been been sporadic and have been dealt with in an ad hoc manner.” She said no statistics were available on such cases.

Theodore R. Sarbin, a retired professor of psychology and criminology at UC Santa Cruz, co-authored a 1991 study for the military that disputed the argument that homosexuals would represent a security concern. He said “there is no data” linking gays to lower morale or cohesion. Rather, he said, “Where there’s good leadership, there’s high morale.”

Urban police departments that have adopted non-discrimination statutes and taken steps to actively recruit officers from the homosexual community have not reported a drop-off in morale.

San Francisco was among the first to take such steps. Police Chief Anthony D. Ribera, a Vietnam veteran, practicing Roman Catholic and a self-described conservative, recently wrote Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to express concern over Powell’s opposition to lifting the military ban.

“In 1979, before the first openly gay and lesbian officers entered our department, I had doubts about the propriety of hiring gays as police officers,” Ribera said in his Dec. 10 letter. “Today the San Francisco Police Department has approximately 85 openly gay and lesbian officers. Their performance, professional conduct and loyalty to the department has been exemplary.”

Sgt. David Spencer, who oversees the department’s Equal Employment Opportunity unit, said that he had not received any complaints of harassment or discrimination in the past two years.

Allowing gays to serve openly would infringe on the privacy of those who find the homosexual lifestyle offensive and would lead to sexual tensions and even violence against gays.

Homosexuals “are notoriously promiscuous,” said the Navy’s Heimbach. “You find that when folks declare themselves homosexual while they are in the military, we have to protect them” from attacks by heterosexuals.

Opponents of the ban point out that laws that prohibit sexual harassment cover any untoward advances--heterosexual as well as homosexual. Beyond the 1982 ban, the Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids oral and anal intercourse among both homosexuals and heterosexuals, though this law is enforced primarily in cases against homosexuals and in other cases involving heterosexuals in assaults like rape.

In Holland, where the ban against gays in the military was lifted amid considerable uproar about homosexuality in 1974, only a single case of sexual misconduct involving a gay or lesbian was reported in the past four years, said Maj. Jos Hooimeyer, assistant military attache at the Dutch embassy. He said the individual is awaiting trial on criminal charges.

In Israel, if a problem arises with a homosexual, the recruit may be transferred to another unit. If an individual has an ongoing behavioral problem, he or she may be assigned to a noncombat unit on a military base and allowed to return home at night.

In the United States, police and fire departments generally have not experienced serious problems integrating homosexuals, according to a 1992 study by the investigative arm of Congress.

The General Accounting Office reported that “police and fire officials who have admitted homosexuals into their departments stated that homosexuals and heterosexuals appear to have acceptable working relationships. This may be due partly to the fact that all of the departments we visited had developed and put in place sensitivity, diversity and/or cultural awareness training programs.”

Representatives of several oil companies, whose workers often live together in cramped and isolated quarters, said they do not ban homosexuals from their firms. Spokesmen for Chevron, Mobil, ARCO and Amoco said they were not aware of any significant problems in this regard.

On college campuses, however, where homosexual groups have had increasingly high profiles, backlash has been apparent.

Studies at Oberlin, Yale, Penn State and Rutgers in the past four years have found that half of the openly gay and lesbian students, faculty and staff surveyed reported they were verbally harassed; one in five said they were physically threatened and one in 20 that they were punched, hit, kicked or beaten because of their sexual orientation, said Kevin Berrill, a consultant on violence against gays and lesbians at colleges and universities.

Repealing the ban would undermine recruiting and force devoutly religious members to resign.

“Homosexuality is unhealthy, immoral, addictive and dangerous to others,” said Robert Knight, director of cultural studies for the Family Research Council, a Washington think tank that reflects the views of conservative Christians.

“We’re already consulting lawyers to determine how parents can use conscientious objector status to exempt their children from service in this pan-sexual organization.”

In Canada, where the ban was lifted three months ago under a court order, no incidents have been reported and no resignations have been received, Capt. Brett Boudreau, a spokesman for the Department of National Defense, told the Associated Press. He added, “We have nobody standing up and declaring their sexual preference.”

Boudreau said that “people have come to the realization that a change in the policy doesn’t mean the floodgates are open and that homosexuals” will be entering en masse.

Proponents of repealing the ban note that the same argument about driving out others on moral grounds was also made when President Harry S. Truman integrated blacks and whites in the military in 1948.

The Seattle Fire Department, which adopted a nondiscrimination provision in 1979, has not seen its recruitment suffer, said spokeswoman Georgia Taylor. “We’ve had our problems historically with women and minorities entering the department but we haven’t had anyone walk off the job based on someone’s sexual preference,” she said.

A greater number of gays and lesbians in the services will increase the risk of AIDS for heterosexuals.

Most public health officials say considerable evidence contradicts this assertion.

“The concern is not justified,” said Larry Kessler, executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and a member of the National Commission on AIDS. “It does not increase your chances unless you are going to have unprotected sex or share a needle.”

Unlike the general population, those entering the military are screened for the HIV infection. They are periodically tested during their service. Those testing positive for HIV are immediately taken off deployment status and therefore would not be sent abroad or into combat situations.

The risk that the virus could be transmitted through contaminated blood during an accident or combat is remote, these experts said. Most transfusions, even on the battlefield, draw on carefully screened and stored blood, Kessler said.

An individual could be exposed if his or her blood mixed with the blood of an infected comrade but, even then, the available evidence indicates that the risk of contracting HIV is slim. Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga., said research shows that health care workers who were accidentally pricked by a needle containing infected blood have one chance in 300 of actually getting the virus.

This is not to say that the armed forces are not already grappling with the AIDS issue.

A recent study of the sexual behavior of over 18,000 active duty Army personnel commissioned by the military found that 42% of those surveyed had engaged in one or more activities that put them at risk of exposure to the virus.

The factors were at least one “one-night stand” sexual relationship in the past year, five or more sexual partners, a sexual partner known or suspected of having sex with other men, an anonymous sexual partner, a partner who had HIV or AIDS, sharing a needle in the past two years or having sex with a prostitute.

Dr. Lydia R. Temoshok, an AIDS researcher with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, who conducted the study, has briefed senior Army officials on her findings.

Times staff writer Constance Sommer and researcher D.J. Salem contributed to this story.