Military Experts Back Proposal to Let Gays Keep Their Privacy

Military experts testifying before a congressional committee Wednesday fell in line behind the proposal of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to allow homosexuals to serve in the military so long as they keep their sexual orientation a secret from fellow service members.

The experts, first appearing to bolster the case against gays in the military, conceded under questioning at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is chaired by Nunn, that if homosexual service members’ behavior does not threaten others or highlight differences within the groups in which they serve, there is no reason to believe that their presence would erode the fighting power of U.S. forces.

“What I favor is not looking at private behavior and not making someone accountable for what’s in his or her head,” said David H. Marlowe, a social anthropologist and chief of the Military Psychiatry Department of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Marlowe said under questioning that he believes “a significant part” of widespread military opposition to lifting the ban is “based on prejudice.”

Retired Army Col. William Darryl Henderson also said under questioning from opponents of the ban that “if the (homosexual) behavior is kept private, I have no problem” with allowing gays in the military.

He said his own studies have shown that few homosexual service members are eager to declare their sexual orientation anyway. Only 1 in 10 homosexuals serving in the Dutch military did so after a similar ban was lifted there in 1974, he reported.

Both Marlowe and Henderson, who wrote a book on unit cohesion, earlier had stressed the potentially shattering effect that gays would have on the effectiveness of small combat units.

As the first phase of the hearings on gays in the military ends, momentum appeared to be building for a compromise that would allow gays to serve but severely curtail their behavior. Some gays have said privately that a form of the Nunn-backed compromise may be as much as they can hope for.