Few Are Happy With ‘Don’t Ask’ Policy

Pvt. Javier Torres had been stationed at three posts before the Army gave him its first official instruction on treatment of gays in the ranks.

It came in a 30-second lecture delivered by a sergeant one day after a suspected gay soldier at Torres’ post--Ft. Campbell, Ky.--was brutally killed by an infantryman wielding a baseball bat. Torres remembers it well: “Leave the fags alone,” the sergeant growled before moving on to other subjects.

With the military’s controversial policy toward gay service members again under intense national scrutiny, many current and former personnel say a widespread ignorance clouds the rules, undermining the policy and perhaps contributing to a climate in which harassment of gays can occur.

Each service has training programs for its officers and troops. But like Torres, many say they have received little official word on how homosexuals are supposed to comport themselves and be treated.

Congress adopted the policy, nicknamed “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,” in 1994 as a compromise after a yearlong political furor. It allows homosexuals to serve in the military--provided that they do not commit homosexual acts or disclose that they are gay. It forbids harassment of gays and says commanders are not to investigate people for homosexual behavior unless they have “credible” information.

Clinton Calls His Policy ‘Out of Whack’

Hardly anyone is happy with the way the policy has worked out.

In the aftermath of the July murder at Ft. Campbell of Pfc. Barry Winchell, President Clinton this month declared his policy to be “out of whack.”

Gay advocates charge that the military has been sluggish about implementing it because many commanders strongly oppose having homosexuals in the ranks. The result, they argue, is a favorable climate for harassment of gays.

“The problem has been the leadership,” said Michelle Benecke, co-executive director of the Service Members Legal Defense Network, a Washington organization that represents gay troops.

Edwin Dorn, the Pentagon’s top personnel officer earlier in the Clinton administration, is not convinced that Benecke is right. But he acknowledges that it is “absolutely” important for troops to understand this “very challenging policy.”

After Winchell’s murder, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen ordered a 90-day crash study of the military climate toward homosexuals.

Although Pentagon officials generally defend their training efforts, they have been scrambling to overhaul them since Winchell’s death.

The Navy, for example, began a program Dec. 1 to instruct recruits on the basics of the policy, including rules against harassment and limits on investigations of suspected gay sailors. Previously, initial training consisted of general guidance against mistreatment of peers, Navy officials said.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials are about to give final blessing to a revised and stricter program of anti-harassment training for all the services. The impetus was a memo by then-Undersecretary Dorn nearly three years ago that, despite pressure from gay activists, produced little action until the Winchell murder.

Some service members and veterans say the military leadership still has a long way to go to prove that it takes this subject seriously.

Although some commanders have taken the initiative to ensure the policy is understood and followed, in many other units there has been a vacuum of information that has led to confusion about the rules and, some say, helped foster a hostile environment.

Torres, who left the Army in September after informing superiors he is gay, said soldiers in his unit routinely made jokes and disparaging comments about gays. Soldiers suspected of being gay came in for pointed questions.

Torres recalled that, just after Winchell’s death, one soldier said, “So what? He was just a fag.” During the morning exercise run, Torres said, a sergeant sang this cadence: “Faggot, faggot, down the street. Shot him, shot him, till he retreats.”

Soldiers Sought Him Out to Give Support

At the same time, Torres said, the environment in his unit was not uniformly hostile. When he announced he is gay and prepared to leave, some soldiers sought him out to tell him they thought that he had “always been cool” and that they were sorry he was going.

His commanding officer tried to talk him out of seeking a discharge, saying he was a “good soldier” whom the unit shouldn’t lose. The declaration of homosexuality “can just be between you and me,” Torres said the officer told him.

Torres said he chose to leave because he hated lying about his orientation and didn’t feel safe at the base where Winchell was killed.

At a pretrial proceeding, Winchell’s platoon sergeant, Michael Kleifgen, said he had received no guidance on the military’s policy toward gays. Other personnel issues drew considerably more attention.

Justin Elzie, a former Marine supply sergeant who left the service in 1997, recalled a bulletin board in his unit that was festooned with instructions on all sorts of topics--equal opportunity, safety, and proper treatment of women and other Marines. Yet he never saw a mention of the rules regarding treatment of gay troops.

In this climate, there are huge differences from unit to unit in the treatment of homosexuals. Some troops feel comfortable frequenting gay bars in off hours. (Under the rules, a member’s visit to a gay bar isn’t sufficient grounds for an investigation, although dancing at the bar with somebody of the same sex is.)

Other gays “are always scared,” Elzie said. “They go right home from work and never go out.”

A Navy chief petty officer in San Diego who is gay said that during his more than 10 years in the Navy he has felt comfortable in all of his assignments but one.

Most often, the commanding officers would “let me know things were cool, that they’d protect me,” said the petty officer, who asked to remain unidentified.

Yet in the hostile unit, which was a shipboard assignment, sailors would call him names and sometimes shove him when he passed in a corridor. He felt he could have been hurt, he said, and made sure to hang out with sailors, straight and gay, who he knew would help protect him.

This petty officer said the first official instructions he saw on the “don’t ask” rules came only in October, after the chief of naval operations issued a directive on the Navy’s policy against harassment.

Critics say military leaders have sometimes communicated with subordinates about the homosexual-conduct rules in joking or derogatory ways that suggest the guidelines shouldn’t be taken seriously.

In October, an officer at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, northeast of Palm Springs, sent an e-mail to some fellow officers saying that “due to the death of a homo in the Army, we now have to take extra steps to ensure the safety of a queer who has ‘told.’ Commanders now bear the responsibility if someone decides to assault the young 1/8homosexual 3/8.”

A spokesman for the Marine combat center, Capt. Vincent Bosques, said the incident was under investigation. Such language, he said, “has no place at the combat center or in the Marine Corps.”

A recent poll by Triangle Institute for Security Studies found 76% of senior officers opposed permitting gays to serve openly in the military, and 27% said that dropping the barriers to gays could drive them into retirement.

Many officers say they believe the presence of gays would hurt their ability to maintain “unit cohesion” during combat. Some fear driving away socially conservative young men of blue-collar backgrounds, who are the military’s greatest source of recruits.

One senior officer, who asked to remain unidentified, said some of his fellow officers fear any shift--and any publicity--would hurt readiness, disrupt their units and generally make their job tougher.

“Some people just think, the less said the better,” he said.