Contributed by A. Scott Henderson (FL ’82)

Regardless of what the philosopher George Santayana said, the past is often doomed to be repeated whether we remember it or not.  This is especially true for policy debates.  Recent discussions concerning the military’s ban against openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members underscore this point.

Enacted in December of 1993, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy was a compromise between the Clinton administration and Congress over the president’s desire to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces.  DADT prohibits military officials from ferreting out or identifying closeted gay, lesbian, or bisexual personnel (“don’t ask”), while enjoining the latter—under threat of discharge—from being open about their sexual orientation (“don’t tell”).  Data from a variety of sources, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, indicate that over 13,000 troops have been discharged under DADT (see http://www.sldn.org/pages/about-dadt).

Efforts to repeal DADT gained momentum with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, who publicly opposed the policy.  In early 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the Pentagon would conduct a study to assess the impact of ending DADT, and in May of that same year the U.S. House of Representatives added a provision to the Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2011 that would repeal DADT.

The most vocal critics of DADT’s repeal have been the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion.  The VFW believes that permitting gays and lesbians to openly serve would undermine the “morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability” (see http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=caphill.levele&eid=4192).  Similarly, the American Legion has warned that a repeal of DADT would endanger “national security” and “unit cohesion” (see http://clarencehill.legion.org/2010/05/the-american-legion-to-congress-dont-repeal-dont-ask-dont-tell/).  In short, both organizations stress the corrosive effect that gay and lesbian soldiers would have on heterosexual ones.

Supporters of DADT’s repeal are quick to note that these are some of the same arguments that were used against integrating the armed services along racial and gender lines.  But the déjà vu aspect of current policy debates does not end there.  To see why, we need to travel back to early-1950s America (President Harry Truman’s second term).  In addition to the anti-communist hysteria that swept the country during those years, there was a witch-hunt aimed at federal employees who were homosexuals.  This “lavender scare”—to borrow the apt title from historian David K. Johnson’s excellent book on the subject—foreshadowed subsequent rationales used by policymakers and elected officials to deny gays and lesbians equal rights.

“Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” was perhaps the lavender scare’s most telling and disturbing document.  This report was issued in 1950 by an ad-hoc subcommittee of the United States Senate that was chaired by North Carolina Democrat Clyde Hoey.  For Hoey and his fellow committee members, employing homosexuals in the federal government was primarily a security problem (homosexuals were especially vulnerable to blackmail, or so the argument ran).

But committee members also listed other reasons for barring homosexuals from government employment.  Engaging in homosexual acts reflected “emotional instability” and led to weakened “moral fiber,” qualities that would poison the workplace.  Moreover, because homosexuals tended to “gather other perverts” around them, their numbers would multiply as soon as a few got their feet in the door.  Once employed, they would “attempt to entice normal individuals,” especially “young and impressionable people,” to participate in “perverted practices.”  As the report chillingly concluded, “One homosexual can pollute a government office.”  In 1953, Eisenhower heeded those admonitions by signing an executive order disqualifying from federal service any individual who practiced “sexual perversion.”

The Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, John W. Macy Jr., would echo the contamination metaphor several years later.  In a 1966 State Department newsletter, Macy argued that the employment ban should be maintained because of the “apprehension” and “revulsion” that homosexuals would cause “other [heterosexual] employees to feel,” as well as the umbrage they would generate if the public had to interact with a “known or admitted sexual deviate.”  Ultimately, these disruptions would cause a diminishment of “service efficiency.”

As Gregory B. Lewis has shown in his insightful examination of the topic in the Public Administration Review, supporters of the ban emphasized how the mere presence of homosexuals would trigger the prejudices of others.  However, instead of addressing the causes of intolerance, they believed it was better, or at least easier, to simply eliminate its presumed catalyst (which would be like making a playground off-limits to children who wore glasses because their appearance sparked the anger of bullies).  The ban enacted by Eisenhower’s executive order would not be phased out until 1975.

This brings us back full circle to current debates over repealing DADT.  If we replace “military service” with “civilian service,” it is as if we have returned to the 1950s and 1960s.  Like that era, it is not the competence of gays and lesbians that is currently being questioned, but an essential characteristic—their sexual orientation.  Because others (mainly heterosexual men) are deemed incapable of dealing with this characteristic, military officials demand that it be expunged whenever it appears—for instance, several dozen Arabic translators have been discharged since 1998 for being gay.  To put it another way, just as the Department of Homeland Security has a “red level” to indicate a severe risk of terrorist attack, the military’s DADT policy functions as an alarm against those who are a putative threat to our personal and collective well-being.

Regrettably, pleas for military or civilian “cohesion” are often based on simplistic and misleading us-vs.-them dichotomies.  Whether we shout “Wir sind ein Volk!”  (“We are one people!”) or decorously affirm our support of “traditional family values,” we often do so at the expense of denying others their humanity.  We should keep this in mind as we continue to debate the future of DADT and similar policies.

A. Scott Henderson (FL ’82) is an Associate Professor of Education at Furman University.