TALKING POINTS

HISTORY OF THE BAN 


*	The ban on gay servicemembers is not universally 
accepted within the military.  Despite contrary 
pronouncements from senior military leaders, many 
servicemembers disagree with the ban.  One example, 
Major General Gregory P. Barlow, commander of Vietnam 
veteran Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, wept when he 
was forced to discharge her after trying, unsuccessfully, for 
two years to obtain an exception to the DOD ban.  The 
officer in charge of Cammermeyer's discharge board 
similarly lamented that the Army was "losing a great 
American" when he was forced by current policy to 
rubberstamp her discharge. ("Dismissed from Army as 
Lesbian, Colonel Will Fight Homosexual Ban", N.Y. Times, 
May 31, 1992, at 14.) The numerous letters to the editor 
from military personnel who support President Clinton's 
proposed executive order attest to the fact that Colonel 
Cammermeyer's chain-of-command does not stand alone in 
its opposition to the current policy.  This position has been 
echoed by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for 
President Ronald Reagan, Admiral William Crowe.

*	The military has not always explicitly and 
automatically excluded gay servicemembers.  The military's 
desire to screen out gay people prior to service, and to 
discharging those discovered to be gay during service, was 
developed only at the beginning of World War II.  Since that 
time, enforcement of military policies regarding gay people 
has varied with military personnel needs and political 
administrations.  The military relaxed enforcement of its 
policies during World War II, the Vietnam War and, most 
recently, during the Gulf War, when at least fourteen gay 
and lesbian reservists were cleared by their unit 
commanders to serve in the Gulf after stating their sexual 
orientation.  The military's willingness to use openly gay 
servicemembers during times of war, when the 
justifications for the ban should presumably be at their 
height, underscores the flawed nature of the policy.  	 

                     	
*	Even military leaders now acknowledge that many gay 
men, lesbians and bisexuals currently serve, and have 
historically served, with valor and merit.  
 
	There is no need to wait for another war to prove 
again that the half-century-old exclusion policy should be 
lifted.
	


*	The Department of Defense Policy is based on an 
obsolete psychiatric understanding of homosexual 
orientation.  The current ban on gay servicemembers is a 
direct descendent of World War II Army and Selective 
Service policies based on a psychiatric belief at the time 
that homosexuality was a mental disorder.  The conception 
of homosexual orientation as a mental disorder has since 
been rejected by the psychiatric (1973), psychological 
(1975) and social work (1988) professions.  Since the basis 
of the policy has been soundly rejected, the ban on gay 
servicemembers must be rescinded.  


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Prepared by the Legal/Policy Department of the Campaign 
for Military Service.   2707 Massachussetts Ave, NW   
Washington, DC 20009.  (202) 265-6666.