Subject: MILITARY INS AND OUTS

From: Song Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 1994 22:36:00 EDT

JUSTICE

MILITARY INS AND OUTS

The Pentagon ponders its options after a court orders the reinstatement
of a gay National Guard colonel

BY DAVID VAN BIEMA

Some would suggest it was a silly question to bother her with, at this
stage in a brilliant career; a little like pestering a star athlete who
has led his team to a brace of championships about his religious
preference. National Guard Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer had earned a
Bronze Star for supervising a hospital during the Vietnam War; in 1985
the Veterans Administration named her Nurse of the Year over 34,000 other
candidates; and most recently, she had served as chief nurse of the
Washington National Guard. But somebody's curiosity got the better of
him: during a security clearance in 1989 for her admission to the Army
War College, Cammermeyer was quizzed about her sexual preference. And so
she answered: she is gay.

Her subsequent discharge from the armed forces in 1992 attracted
headlines around the country and eventually helped persuade the Clinton
Administration to change its policy on gays in the military last year. At
the time, her superiors fought her ouster; on the day of her departure,
her commanding officer wept. And last week Federal District Judge Thomas
S. Zilly ordered her reinstated. The judge, a Reagan appointee, explained
that the old military policy was "based on heterosexual members' fear and
dislike of homosexuals." Given the Constitution's equal-protection
clause, Zilly continued, such feelings "are . . . impermissible bases for
governmental policies." Said a jubilant Cammermeyer: "This is what we've
been waiting for. We won!"

The battle, if not the war. Zilly's decision was the seventh lower-court
ruling against the old military rules on homosexuality; and, like several
of the other decisions, it has implications for the new regulations
negotiated by Bill Clinton and Senator Sam Nunn last summer. The events
that led to Cammermeyer's discharge might not have occurred under the new
"don't ask, don't tell" policy, since she might never have been asked.
But her answer would break the new as well as the old regulations. The
current policy holds that although homosexual "status" is theoretically
permissible, admitting to it signals an impermissible intent to engage in
homosexual "conduct."

Judge Zilly's ruling heartened gay-rights activists. "Change in this
policy is inevitable," said Joseph Steffan, whose 1987 expulsion from the
U.S. Naval Academy on similar grounds was overturned by an appeals court
late last year. "The only question is when, and decisions like this lead
to the conclusion that it may be sooner rather than later." The military
itself seems torn about whether to appeal the Cammermeyer verdict. "We
have to press ahead," said one official. "If we let this decision stand .
. . we'd be barred from enforcing our own policy." Yet Pentagon spokesman
Dennis Boxx was more cautious. "We disagree with the judge's conclusions
in the Cammermeyer case," he said, but "we need to look very hard --
along with the Justice Department -- to see how far we want to pursue
that disagreement."

The hidden reference in that statement was doubtless to the Supreme
Court, which is expected to encounter several appeals-court rulings on
both the old and new rules on military homosexuality in the next few
years. Which case it chooses to hear and how it rules may well be the
final word on the topic for some time. Until then, admits Tanya Domi, a
retired Army captain who is now legislative director for the National Gay
and Lesbian Task force, "we're stuck. You have to continue to hide and
lie."

Reported by Ellis E. Conklin/Seattle and Mark Thompson/Washington

Copyright 1994 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Transmitted:  94-06-05 12:05:06 EDT