COLMAN McCARTHY - Why Endorse Military's Anti-Gay Bias?. The Washington Post, June 08, 1993, FINAL Edition By: COLMAN McCARTHY Section: FINANCIAL, p. d22 If the Clinton administration sees no problem in hiring Roberta Achtenberg, a lesbian attorney from San Francisco, for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, why is the White House undone by other homosexuals working for the Department of Defense? Achtenberg, who was confirmed by the Senate in late May to be assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, had the support of the administration in ways that its gay and lesbian military personnel do not. Three days after the confirmation of Achtenberg-she was in Washington during the Senate hearings with her lover, Judge Mary Morgan-President Clinton said it "is a legitimate concern" that "our country does not appear to be endorsing a gay lifestyle" as he and Congress move to a decision on homosexuals in the military. "But we accept people as people and give them a chance to serve if they play by the rules." If Clinton had a surer grasp of the long history of hate crimes, harassment and violence against gays in the armed forces, he would have turned the issue around: The country's concern should be that we are endorsing a lifestyle of bias. The spirit of bigotry is likely to remain intact as Clinton, whether playing footsie with Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) or tripping over his own words, slouches away from his original pledge of ordering an end to the ban on gays in the military. The cover for Clinton's folding is that politics means compromise and on this issue everyone-the Joint Chiefs, Nunn, the White House and the gays-has to give a little. That has a ring of democratic consensus to it, except how can compromises be made with hate and discrimination? The emerging solution of "don't ask and don't tell" is less a compromise than a return to the way it's been all along. What needs to be asked and told is why heterosexual military leaders think that in the name of "unit cohesion" they are licensed to destroy the lives of soldiers whose sexuality differs from the majority. One answer is that the public hasn't asked and hasn't been told about the violent, witch-hunting results of the military's anti-gay hang-ups. Former Navy secretary John F. Lehman Jr., a Reagan appointee, spoke of them last November when describing a congressionally approved 800-number hot line in the Pentagon for any amateur vigilante wanting to report on a gay soldier. It's a "Gestapo system," Lehman said. "Anybody who disagrees with their boss can make an anonymous call and accuse him of being a homosexual." The resulting dragnets, purges and courts-martial of this "get the fags" and other similar policies are documented by Randy Shilts in "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the Military." This 784-page work, which shines with journalistic excellence, is based on five years of interviews with more than 1,000 gay military people who were persecuted, jailed, discharged or, in some cases, eventually driven to suicide. Shilts estimates that as many as 2,000 homosexuals have been investigated and forced out of the military every year in the past decade. "The presence of gay men," he writes, "especially so many who are thoroughly competent for military service, calls into question everything that manhood is supposed to mean. For both men and women, the story of gays in the military is a story about manhood. For generations, after all, the military has been an institution that has promised to do one thing, if nothing else, and that is to take a boy and make him a man. The military's gay policy crisis in the past decade reflects the turmoil of a nation thrust into conflict over our society's changing definition of manhood." In the face of change, some of the old bucks in uniform shoot back with a favored weapon, bluster. Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr., the Marine Corps commandant, barks: "I don't support homosexual conduct in the United States, period, or in the U.S. military, period." This tough talker has taken too many pugil sticks to the head. It's misconduct, not conduct, that's the problem. If the general wants to withhold his support for any behavior, it ought to be promiscuity, whether straight or gay. The worst and largest groups of offenders are those heterosexual men who think that rape, the brothel scene and the Tailhook ethic are ways to prove manhood. If that is needed for unit cohesion, the U.S. military has some sorry units.