The Barracks And the Closet

(by Ellen Goodman-- Taken from the July 10 Washington Post)

Let me begin with the obvious: It won't work.

I  am not  being  clairvoyant  about the  compromise  over  gays in  the
military that  is being hatched for  a July 15  due date. But I  can say
that  any variation  on the  current  theme entitled  "Don't Ask,  Don't
Tell," won't work.

It won't resolve the legal questions.  Sooner or Later someone will ask,
someone will tell,  someone will be discharged and someone  will be back
in court.

It  won't resolve  the political  questions either.  Sooner or  later, a
compromise intended to  satisfy the ambivalent majority  - Americans who
don't want to discriminate against gays  and don't want to accept them -
will fall apart from the weight of its own contradictions.

And it certainly won't resolve the conflict between the military leaders
and the gay community.

When you get  right down to it,  "Don't ask, Don't tell,"  is not really
about ending  the witch hunt. Nor  is it really a  gentleman's agreement
not  to  talk  about  sexuality.  Don't ask,  don't  tell,  means  don't
talk...  or else.

It means the closet.

The military no longer claims that  gays and lesbians are security risk.
It no longer claims that  homosexuals can't serve ably, even heroically.
The last-ditch  effort to say  that homosexuality is  "incompatible with
military service"  will fail  because, as Rep.  Barney Frank  says, it's
"incompatible with the truth."

In these months  of a long and often unwelcome  debate, the Pentagon has
finally come down  to arguing one thing: that the  discomfort, the fear,
even the hatred  of gays is itself disruptive to  bonding and morale. So
disruptive  that gays  cannot serve  - and  here is  the crucial  word -
"openly."

Now, openness  means different  things to different  people. There  is a
lot of room between being in the  closet and being in your face. There's
a scale of behavior that runs from repression to flamboyance.

But gays have always been able to serve and succeed in the military, and
everywhere  else in  society,  as long  as they  were  not "open."  What
differentiates the gay  rights movement even now from that  of blacks or
women is that  homosexuals aren't discriminated against as  long as they
"pass."

For that  reason, the  primary symbol  of gay  repression hasn't  been a
ghetto  or  a  list  of  segregation  laws.  It's  been  the  much  more
psychologically  complex  image of  the  closet:  the dark  place  where
cultural hate meets, and makes, self-hate.

The closet may have claimed more  gay lives in America than hate crimes.
It has  surely devastated more  psyches, through hiding and  lying, than
dishonorable discharges.

Because of the  closet, the gay rights movement has  not just been about
breaking  the  barriers.  It's  been   about  breaking  silence.  For  a
generation, the most important gay march has been a long line of men and
women coming out, one at a time.

Some  of  these  decisions  have  meant quiet  and  private  talks  with
parents. Some  have meant  public and  ostentatious pronouncements  of a
"Queer Nation. At times, as a gay  comedian put it, "The love that dared
not speak its name, can't seem to shut up."

This conversation  about single-sex love,  lovers, and partners  has, to
put it mildly,  made millions of Americans uneasy. But  it has also make
millions  of Americans  more comfortable  with gayness.  Each and  every
survey says that straight Americans  who know homosexuals personally, as
family  members and  friends, are  more accepting  that those  who don't
"know" any.

In that sense,  gays and lesbians become change agents  simply by making
themselves  "known,"  We've seen  that  too  in  the argument  over  the
military.  The soldiers  coming  out, with  Purple  Hearts and  military
bearing, are the  ones who proved that homosexuality and  heroism can go
together.

It's the  closet that's incompatible... with  self-acceptance and public
acceptance.

And with change.

The compromise being worked out  now will, at best, balance precariously
on the threshold  of the closet door. "Don't ask"  offers a step forward
for gays in the military. But  "Don't tell" threatens a step backward in
the overall direction of the gay movement.

Fused  together, this  may be  the most  we can  expect from  an anxious
Congress,  an angry  Pentagon,  a nervous  president  and an  ambivalent
public. A  pretty good  rule in politics  is to take  what you  can get.

But take  this one with a  caveat. In the  long run, in the  medium run,
and maybe even the short run:  It won't work.