Why gays shouldn't serve

By David Horowitz

Jun 27, 2001 | Read the story.

I am a heterosexual male with a wife and four children. I spent 12 years in the United States Marine Corps. In that time I served with three men and eight women I know of who were gay. None of them were ever discipline problems and all but two were promoted at least one rank meritoriously. Three of these fine Marines were given "good of the service" discharges when their orientation became known -- in one case after almost eight years of service.

David Horowitz makes much of the integration of minorities in 1947 but does not mention that that integration was the result of a presidential order and most military commanders fought it tooth and nail. He also makes much of women in the military, and I have reservations about women in combat myself. But the defining point is that a gay man is still a man, and more importantly, a soldier or Marine.

The problem with the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy is that it doesn't go far enough. President Clinton, like President Truman before him, should simply have given the order to integrate. Men and women in the armed forces are used to overcoming obstacles far greater than mere personal prejudices and would, I am certain, rise to the challenge.

-- Kelly McCune

In his column arguing that military people who oppose gays in the fighting forces do so for good reasons besides prejudice, David Horowitz is quick to disclaim that he's no military expert.

Indeed. "Suppose two men in a five-man unit are sexual partners," he writes, noting that such a situation could threaten unit cohesion. Of course it could -- which is why the military has strict rules against fraternization, the violation of which is punishable by court-martial.

The point fails logically as well. If Horowitz is so quick to dismiss the rule of law within the military as ineffective, then he should call for single-man fighting units. After all, what if two soldiers in a unit, both heterosexual, developed a strong dislike for each other? That would surely threaten cohesion as well -- unless we're willing to concede that the military operates under rule of law, and that it's the best system we can achieve.

Finally, Horowitz decries women's involvement in the military because when women soldiers get pregnant with other soldiers, the "military looks the other way." I haven't gathered systematic data on this, but I used to report on naval courts-martial for the San Diego Reader, coincidentally not long after the Gulf War that Horowitz implies the U.S. almost lost because of all the pregnant soldiers. The majority of trials I witnessed were the usual drug-related ones and male-female fraternization cases.

Perhaps Horowitz should step out past those armed bodyguards he's so proud of and do some reporting.

-- Jeff Sharlet

"Unit cohesion" is the basis of your argument that gays and women do not belong in the military. I then ask: Is there proof that both women and gay men are more likely to develop close relationships with peers than heterosexual men? Because that is the sole assertion of your argument: that when gay men and women are added to the military, there will be a higher percentage of people who care about one another -- and that caring compromises the "fighting machine."

-- Keith Fredericks

Horowitz writes, "To avoid such breaches of military discipline, military policy does not allow family members to fight in the same unit."

The reason the military does not allow family members to serve in the same unit is so there will be no repeat of the horrors of the Civil War generally, and what happened to the Sullivan brothers during World War II. In the former conflict, whole families of men would evaporate in a single fusillade of canister fire, let alone in a single battle. And much of the almost unbelievable courage and valor of those troops is now recognized as having arisen from there being family and close friends in one's unit; a soldier was less likely to fail in his duty when surrounded by such intimates.

When all five of the Sullivan brothers were killed when their ship went down during World War II, the military made a decision to ensure that family members were scattered among different units.

And Horowitz's offhandedly homophobic assumption that gay men are unable to control themselves sexually is infuriating. Horowitz implicitly states that being gay somehow automatically equals being extravagantly irresponsible regarding sex. This is patent nonsense.

The hostility of the U.S. military toward openly homosexual men and women in the armed forces has to do with violent homophobia. That hatred, however much Horowitz may wish to deny it, is not a valid reason to disallow gays and lesbians from openly serving their country.

-- Rob Anderson

Next Page: "The women en route to Desert Storm 'got pregnant'? On their own?"

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