Sexual Orientation and The United States Military - Standard Policy, 1949-1993

Standard Policy, 1949-1993

In October 1949, the newly-consolidated Department of Defense standardized anti-homosexual regulations across all branches of the military: "Homosexual personnel, irrespective of sex, should not be permitted to serve in any branch of the Armed Forces in any capacity, and prompt separation of known homosexuals from the Armed Forces is mandatory."

The success of the armed forces in pre-screening self-identified gay and bisexual people from the 1940s through 1981 remains in dispute; during the Vietnam War, some men pretended to be gay in order to avoid the draft. However, a significant number of gay and bisexual men and women did manage to pass through the screening process and serve in the military, some with special distinction. For example, in the 1950s, the Navy medical doctor Tom Dooley received national fame for his anti-Communist and humanitarian efforts in Vietnam. He was forced to resign in March 1956 when found to have participated in homosexual activities. The Navy conducted the first official study on sexual orientation and the Navy regulations and rules. In 1957, the Crittenden Report found that gay-identified people were no more likely to be a security risk than heterosexual-identified people, but nevertheless recommended that homosexuals be excluded from service because "Homosexuality is wrong, it is evil, and it is to be branded as such."

By the 1970s, a gay servicemember who had not committed any homosexual acts while in service generally received a general discharge, while those found to have engaged in homosexual conduct more often received undesirable discharges. Gay servicemembers received a disproportionate percentage of undesirable discharges issued.

During the 1970s, several high-profile court challenges to the military's regulations on homosexuality occurred, with little success, and when such successes did occur it was when the plaintiff had been open about his homosexuality from the beginning or due to the existence of the "queen for a day" rule. In 1981, the Department of Defense issued a new regulation on homosexuality that was designed to ensure withstanding a court challenge by developing uniform and clearly defined regulations and justifications that made homosexual status, whether self-applied or by the military, and conduct grounds for discharge (DOD Directive 1332.14 (Enlisted Administrative Separations), January 1981):

Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among service members; to ensure the integrity of the system of rank and command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of service members who frequently must live and work in close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the armed forces; to maintain the public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.

The directive justified the policy and removed the "queen for a day" rule that had prompted some courts to rule against the armed forces. However, the intent of the policy had also been to treat homosexuality as being akin to a disability discharge and thus ensure that anyone found engaging in homosexual activity and/or identifying as gay, would be separated with an honorable discharge. The DOD policy has since withstood most court challenges, although the United States Supreme Court has refused to weigh in on the constitutionality of the policy, preferring to allow lower courts and the United States Congress to settle the matter.

In the 1980s, many of the Democratic Party presidential candidates expressed an interest in changing the regulations concerning homosexuality in the armed forces, and, as American social mores changed, public opinion began to express more sympathy with gay people in armed forces, at least to the extent that investigations into a serviceman or -woman's sexual behaviour and/or orientation were seen as a witch-hunt. "Gays in the military" became a political issue during the 1992 Presidential campaign, when Clinton, the Democratic candidate, promised to lift the military's ban on homosexual and bisexual people.

In 1992, the United States General Accounting Office published a report entitled Defense Force Management: DOD's Policy on Homosexuality, that outlined the DOD policy on homosexuality and the reasons for it. The report also included excerpts from a previously unpublished 1988 Defense Personnel Security Research and Education Center study on homosexuality that made similar conclusions as the 1957 Crittenden Report.

Some LGBT military personnel sought to overturn the military's ban on service by homosexuals. Among the earliest were Leonard Matlovich, who fought to remain in the Air Force after coming out in 1975, and Perry Watkins, who was drafted in 1967 despite disclosing his homosexuality on his induction papers. District Court judge Gerhard Gesell ordered Matlovich's reinstatement in 1980. Rather than return Matlovich to duty, the Air Force offered him a cash settlement of $160,000, which Matlovich accepted. The Army tried to discharge Watkins several times, until the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered his reinstatement in 1989 and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The appellate court, however, did not rule the military policy unconstitutional in Watkins's case. Rather, it decided that simple equity mandated that the Army could not discharge Watkins for homosexuality when it knew of his sexual orientation all along. Other high-profile discharges included those of Vernon Berg, III, Keith Meinhold, and Tracy Thorne from the Navy; Joseph Steffan from the Naval Academy; Margarethe Cammermeyer from the Washington National Guard; and Miriam Ben-Shalom from the Army Reserve.

At the height of the push to rescind the ban before DADT, Miriam Ben-Shalom joined with other discharged personnel to form the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Veterans of America.