The argument is also, inevitably, about sex.
Perhaps it is really about control and what would happen to one of the last bastions of American traditionalism if its defining social order were tampered with. Or homophobia and a surge in gay bashing that would devastate unit cohesiveness. Some say it's a question of civil rights. The result has often been the rhetorical equivalent to the fog of battle, a fog in which women have been peculiarly absent, the ghosts of the debate. Polls show that the nation remains divided, working its way through a subject as fiery as abortion yet imbued with more primal fears and deep social and religious constraints. They have spent millions of dollars on a neatly packaged, well-advertised battle, underscored by a march on Washington next Sunday, to win inclusion in the ranks as blacks and women did before them. Gay advocacy groups like the Campaign for Military Service saw the issue rapidly expand into a national debate on the worthiness of homosexuals. With President Clinton's announcement in January that the ban on homosexuals in the military would be lifted, a military tradition became harder to keep. The armed forces thus maintained the facade of sexual purity (read: heterosexuality). Homosexual interludes were discounted as sparked by frustration. In the 1940's, if something untoward occurred, it was ascribed to "emergency" or "deprivation" homosexuality, according to John Costello in "Virtue Under Fire," a 1985 study of changing sexual mores brought about by World War II. Pentagon officials, who had been notably recalcitrant in cooperating with the plan, said last week that they are rushing through several studies to address key matters like housing.Īs things have stood, homosexuals could serve so long as they could hide. That military tradition of keeping out homosexuals could end on July 15, when President Clinton has said he will lift the ban. In the repressive atmosphere of the 1950's, discharges for homosexuality soared at the height of the Vietnam War, when recruitment drives were at their peak, enforcement was lax. Homosexuals served throughout World War II and after. Then they devised supposedly foolproof guides to ferret them out: an effeminate flip of hand or a certain nervousness when standing naked before an officer. That year, military psychiatrists, new to the ranks, warned of the "psychopathic personality disorders" that would make homosexuals unfit to fight. UNTIL 1942, no specific proviso barred homosexuals from serving in the military.