Journal of Homosexuality, 60:147–151, 2013 ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2013.744663
INTRODUCTION
The Rise and Fall of DADT JAMES E. PARCO, PhD Department of Economics and Business, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
DAVID A. LEVY, PhD Department of Management, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) marked the end of another era in the ongoing social evolution of the U.S. armed forces. So, when the editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, John Elia, asked us to guest edit a special issue to commemorate it, not only were we honored by the invitation, but we also recognized the importance this issue would likely have for researchers in the decades to come. We approached our task of creating a definitive collection of leading thought on homosexuality in the U.S. military in much the same way we approached our previous volume, Attitudes Aren’t Free (Air University Press, 2010) (prior to DADT repeal). In that book, we sought to showcase the complexity of contemporary social issues by bringing the brightest voices from both sides of the debates. Likewise, in this special issue, we have brought together leading advocates, scholars, and experts analyzing the history, context, issues, and challenges that came to define government policies toward gay and lesbian service members during the latter half of the twentieth century up through early post-DADT repeal. We’ve organized this issue into three primary sections: “Agents for Change,” “Policy Evolution,” and “Organizational Implications.” In “Agents for Change,” we offer key perspectives from some of the most prominent advocates of policy change over the previous decade. As the American political system grappled with the issue of open homosexuality in the U.S. military, these advocates played key roles in the efforts to align government This article is not subject to U.S. copyright law. Address correspondence to James E. Parco, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St., Colorado Springs, CO 80903, USA. E-mail:
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policy with evolving societal attitudes and achieve social justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBTQ) service members. In the following paragraphs, we provide a brief overview of the articles, authors, and key ideas contained in this special issue. The lead article in the issue is authored by Nathaniel Frank, acclaimed author and historian. In 2009, he published Unfriendly Fire (Thomas Dunne Books, 2009), which has become one of the most definitive and comprehensive historical accounts of DADT. In his article in this issue, “The President’s Pleasant Surprise: How LGBT Advocates Ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Frank builds on his previous account and extends his historical analysis all the way through DADT repeal. Frank has been a long-time affiliate of the Palm Center, a research institute that has led the scholarly inquiry into DADT. Aaron Belkin, the founding director of the Palm Center and San Francisco State University political science professor, outlines his argument over what DADT had become in his article entitled, “The Politics of Paranoia.” Belkin’s comments come from a 2010 speech he gave to an audience of 500 U.S. military and international allied officers in a debate with Elaine Donnelly, one of the most vocal antagonists to gays in the military. In his speech, Belkin argues that DADT was never about cohesion, but rather creating political rhetoric reminiscent of McCarthyism of the 1950s rooted in paranoia. As two of the leading scholars in the ongoing dialogue on open homosexuality in the military, it is only fitting that Frank and Belkin set the frame for the rest of the articles that follow. Brenda Sue Fulton, one of the first women graduates of the U.S. Military Academy and the Executive Director of Knights Out, a West Point LGBTQ alumni organization, is the author of “OutServe: An Underground Network Stands Up,” which discusses the emergence of what started as a simple Facebook group. As the Communications Director of OutServe, she chronicles the development of the first social network for LGBTQ active-duty service members and tells the inside story of OutServe’s earliest beginnings. “The Rise of Repeal: Policy Entrepreneurship and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” coauthored by Christopher L. Neff and Luke R. Edgell, looks at the role of policy entrepreneurship in the shift away from DADT. Neff, as the first full-time lobbyist on Capitol Hill dedicated to the repeal of DADT for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), provides a behind-thescenes account of the halls within congressional offices during the final years of DADT. Next, we examine the policy evolution of homosexuality in the military from multiple perspectives. Kellie Wilson-Buford leads the discussion on “Policy Evolution” with her historical account of the seminal cases from the U.S. Court of Military Appeals during the 1950s through the 1970s. In her analysis, she finds that although the appellate court was often used in an attempt to legitimize the policy, in the truest sense of American justice, it
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paradoxically created a body of case law that ultimately set the groundwork for the full inclusion of openly gay service members. “Formalizing the Ban: My Experience in the Reagan Administration” captures the personal reflections of a leading figure in the Reagan Administration on the development of policy of homosexuality in the military. In 1981, as former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Lawrence J. Korb was chiefly responsible for writing the directive to implement his predecessor’s policy, which declared homosexuality to be incompatible with military service. Korb, writing with Center for American Progress colleague Alexander Rothman, reflects on his personal journey in the policy realm toward gay and lesbian service members over a 30-year span. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense embarked on one of the most comprehensive and extensive studies ever undertaken. Beginning in February of that year, a 68-member team led by Army General Carter Ham and Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel, Jeh Johnson authored a report that was delivered to Congress 10 months later and found that the risk to the U.S. military of DADT repeal to be low. This report ultimately led to the policy’s demise weeks later. In “The Comprehensive Review Working Group and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal at the Department of Defense,” Jonathan L. Lee, as a senior DoD official and key member of the Comprehensive Review Working Group, authors an insider’s account of how the Comprehensive Review Working Group arrived at the conclusions contained in this historic report. We have included the executive summary of this report as Appendix 2 to this special issue given its seminal importance as primary source document. Likewise, we have also included two other key source documents as appendixes: the text of the law that led to the creation of DADT (10 USC § 654; Appendix 1) as well as the law that repealed it (Public Law 111–321, 124 Stat. 3515; Appendix 3). In “Outing the Costs of Civil Deference to the Military,” Hastings Law School Professor, Elizabeth L. Hillman, offers a unique and competing perspective on the role that the DoD played in DADT repeal. Although she views repeal as a civil rights triumph, she remains critical of the process that manifested. To Hillman, repeal of DADT was inherently a civilian policy decision, and yet she notes the unprecedented deference given to the military establishment by the nation’s civilian authorities. “Gays in the U.S. Military: Reviewing the Research and Conceptualizing a Way Forward,” by Armando X. Estrada and colleagues from the U.S. Army’s Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences provide a thorough and thought-provoking review of the contemporary research on gays and lesbians in the U.S. military. They also offer a theoretical framework for participation and inclusion of openly gay service personnel. The final section of this issue examines some of the most salient organizational implications of homosexuality and military service. Here, we include a study of our own. At the moment of DADT repeal when LGBTQ personnel
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gained voice for the first time, we captured their narratives. By employing grounded theory techniques, we revealed five irreconcilable contradictions that DADT cast on the organizational realm and the active-duty LGBTQ military members that served under it. Next, L. Michael Allsep, Jr. contributes a provocative essay on “The Myth of the Warrior: Martial Masculinity and the End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” In it, he argues that contemporary military culture remains hindered because military leaders continue to treat key events like the integration of women and the repeal of DADT as policy events, not like the calls for culture change that he argues them to be. He notes how technological development and the changing nature of the battlefield have largely been ignored by a revered culture that overemphasizes a martial masculine ethos, which is becoming increasingly irrelevant in today’s warfighting environment. In response to our initial call for papers to the scholarly community, we quickly realized how little research has been conducted on LGBTQ veterans and the issues most pertinent to them. Thus, we decided to include two articles dedicated to veteran-related issues. In the first study presented in “If We Ask, What They Might Tell: Clinical Assessment Lessons From LGBT Military Personnel Post-DADT,” Maria Heliana Ramirez and colleagues argue that with upward of a million LGBTQ veterans who could be seeking culturally sensitive heath services in the years to come, a significant strain is about to be placed on the U.S. healthcare systems. Their research team offers insight into the domain of LGBTQ veterans’ issues using a community-based participatory approach and provides a series of recommendations for post-DADT healthcare systems improvement. Likewise, Bryan N. Cochran and colleagues examine the mental health characteristics of LGBTQ veterans in a controlled study. Using the quantitative technique of principal component analysis, they find LGBTQ veterans are more prone to mental health issues due to concealment of LGBTQ identity while in the military, most notably posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. In the last article, Adam F. Yerke and Valory Mitchell initiate a discussion on what promises to be the next major social challenge to the U.S. armed services: the integration of transgender service members. Noting that 11 countries already allow transgender service within their respective militaries, it is only a matter of time before the U.S. follows suit. Their article, “Transgender People in the Military: Don’t Ask? Don’t Tell? Don’t Enlist!” is a call for action to build on the lessons learned from DADT. As a postscript to this special issue, we welcome the addition of a Palm Center study entitled “One Year Out” published separately on the first anniversary of DADT repeal. A team of researchers from across military and civilian institutions engaged in an exhaustive study following DADT repeal and found the results to be largely consistent with the experiences of other nations who previously abolished their gay bans. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, we were unable to include this study in the journal version of
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the special issue, but are pleased to have the opportunity to include it in the book version to be published in August 2013. We recognize that with any undertaking of this magnitude, some blind spots will inevitably endure. Our attempt with this special issue was never to comprehensively capture every aspect of the evolution of government policy toward gays and lesbians in the military, but instead to commemorate the waypoint between exclusion and inclusion of yet another group of American service members who merely desire to serve their nation. Finally, we wish to thank all those but for whose efforts, this issue would not have been possible. First and foremost, we want to express our sincere gratitude to the contributors of this issue who have offered profound and original scholarship on a topic of great importance. Moreover, we appreciate your continued diligence to meet deadlines and requests for revision. We also want to thank those authors who submitted articles that were regrettably not included in this issue. With over 60 submissions, we were only able to include the articles that appear in the following pages. Each article submitted went through a rigorous double-blind peer-review process by experts in the field. We are deeply grateful to the two dozen referees who put forth a great deal of time and effort to help us achieve the level of quality desired for this issue. Our board of reviewers included: Aaron Belkin, Fred R. Blass, Lori Bogle, David Boxwell, Morten Ender, Joel England, Nathaniel Frank, Joseph Foster, Daniel Gade, Paula Grant, Kristen Leslie, Julie Manta, Corina McKendry, Gail Murphy-Geiss, Tip Ragan, David Sacko, Steve Samuels, Rachel Sondheimer, Lynn Sylmar, Andrew Wackerfuss, plus several other referees who requested to remain anonymous. We also want to thank Institute for Veterans and Military Families for a grant to help support the administrative aspects of bringing this issue to fruition. A warm and special thanks to the editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, John Elia, for putting his trust and faith in us for this project, making it a pleasure at every turn. We also wish to extend our gratitude to Sean Beppler, Emily Ross, and Kimberley Smith at Routledge for their wonderful support, as well as our production editor, Cheryl Zubrzycki, for her outstanding efforts in putting this together. Last, but certainly not least, we wish to thank the members of the U.S. military not only for their service—past, present, and future—but also for their alacrity in continuing to defend the ideals of our nation so honorably. DADT, rest in peace. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. —Theodore Parker
