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Washington Blade: What a difference 15 years makes

Activists who participated in the 1993 congressional hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and saw last week’s testimony on the policy, say they noticed stark differences in rhetoric and tone between the two hearings.

Witnesses on both sides of the controversial issue, testified July 23 before the personnel subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

Opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” said the gay former service members who testified before Congress — Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Eric Alva and Navy Capt. Joan Darrah — were excellent spokespersons for the cause of repealing the policy. Lawmakers commended the two former service members during the hearing for their role in the armed forces.

But those defending the law, particularly Elaine Donnelly, were ridiculed for holding extreme and anti-gay views.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor for the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would allow gays to serve openly, said Donnelly was using the term “eligibility” to discriminate against gays wanting to serve.

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a former Army officer, described Donnelly’s testimony as an “insult” because she was suggesting that service members were not professional enough to handle gay troops in their units.

Criticism of Donnelly was not limited to lawmakers. Dana Milbank’s July 24 column in the Washington Post was particularly harsh. Milbank said Donnelly’s testimony “achieved the opposite of her intended effect” and “had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy” for repealing the law barring open service.

Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), told the Blade that Donnelly’s testimony during the hearing was so outlandish that he was pleased the committee called her as a witness. Donnelly not only supports current law, but also argues that recruiters should ask enlistees about their sexual orientation before they enter the military to prevent gays from donning uniforms.

“I think that when Elaine Donnelly speaks … her comments defy any rational basis for retaining ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” Sarvis said.

Donnelly, smarting from the treatment she received from lawmakers, told the Blade the way the subcommittee conducted the hearing was “unfortunate” because lawmakers were more interested in deriding her than listening to her views.

“We were there to raise new issues, new questions, but it was very clear the committee was not interested in hearing what we were there to say,” she said. “The bullying that went on … it was just inappropriate. It was not a proud day in the history of that armed services committee.”

But the situation was the reverse in 1993, with supporters of gays serving openly in the military being ridiculed and proponents of a ban seeming more mainstream.

During the 1993 hearings, gay activists accused Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat who was then chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, of orchestrating the hearings to make a ban on open service seem like a necessity.

The 1993 hearings in the House Armed Services Committee, then chaired by Ronald Dellums of California, a Democrat who was in favor of gays serving openly, were seen as more balanced but still somewhat hostile toward gays.

House and Senate lawmakers held about 14 hearings on the issue and heard testimony from more than 50 witnesses. Few witnesses were advocates of open service.

Nunn had a number of “field hearings” at a naval base in Norfolk, Va. In one such 1993 hearing, the former senator toured the sleeping quarters of a submarine, pointing out that gay and straight service members would be in close contact in small spaces where bunk beds were crammed together.

At another field hearing, Nunn was criticized for allowing more than 1,000 sailors to jeer as Lt. Tracy Thorne, an openly gay Navy pilot, testified in favor of allowing gays in the military.

Army Lt. Gen. Calvin A. H. Waller, the second-in-command during the first Persian Gulf War and a military witness, at one point embarrassed lawmakers in 1993 by hypothetically talking about them as gay.

William Cohen, then a senator from Maine, asked Waller what he would do with a soldier who said he was gay but had not engaged in sexual activity.

Waller suggested he refer to this hypothetical soldier as “Cohen,” producing a big laugh in the chambers and a red face on the senator. So Waller suggested “Nunn,” referring to committee chair, and produced another laugh. Finally, he landed upon another way to refer to the soldier: “buttpucker.”

Waller said he would initiate discharge proceedings against “buttpucker.”

Lawrence Korb, now a research fellow at the Center for American Progress and once assistant secretary of defense for manpower for President Reagan, testified at a 1993 Senate hearing in favor of allowing gays to serve openly and recalled the antagonistic atmosphere during the hearing.

“What happened back in 1993 when I testified, I was one of the few people supporting the change,” he said. “The hearing was very contentious and downright hostile.”

Faced with serious questions about “sexual tension,” “conceptually erotic relationships” between service members and the “profound intimacy” of military settings, Korb and other witnesses were forced to sit through a hearing that lasted five hours.

Korb said his argument for open service put him “on the defensive for most of the questions” because the notion of prohibiting gays in the military was “conventional wisdom” at the time. Statements made by witnesses included many of the same points that Donnelly made before lawmakers last week, he said.

“When the other two people who testified with me made many of the same points that Elaine Donnelly made — they were not challenged on it,” he said.

Korb said he took heat during the hearing for speculating that 10 percent of service members are gay. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in 1993 took particular pains to discredit Pentagon-generated studies showing that gay service members perform just as well as their straight counterparts.

Discussions about how prone gays would be to sexual misconduct particularly demonstrate the difference in rhetoric between now and 15 years ago. In 1993, Lauch Faircloth, a Republican senator from North Carolina at the time, eagerly confessed that he didn’t know much about homosexuality and asked Korb if he believed gay troops would be better than straight troops at avoiding sexual misconduct. Faircloth asked what would happen to gay troops who could not control themselves.

“You throw them out,” Korb replied, “like you do anybody else who doesn’t control themselves.”

Shift to last week’s hearing when Donnelly and Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) faced off over whether gays are more inclined to sexual misconduct.

Shays argued that talk about how bringing gays into the military would encourage sexual misconduct is “scurrilous.” The lawmaker pointed a finger a Darrah, the retired lesbian Navy captain, and asked Donnelly why he should “give one twit about this woman’s sexual orientation, when it didn’t interfere one bit with her service?”

Donnelly responded by citing a 1974 incident in a letter she says she received from Cynthia Yost, a former Army medical corpsman. Yost said a group of black lesbians sexually assaulted her, but she didn’t report the incident to keep her record clean.

Shays said in such an incident the lesbian perpetrating the misconduct should be kicked out of the military, but only for bad conduct.

Donnelly retorted that if the lawmaker had his way with allowing open service, sexual misconduct in the military would grow three-fold. Shays dismissed her by saying the military would not “have any times as much.”

Korb, noting the difference in rhetoric between now and 15 years ago, said the climate for the hearing last week “was almost the opposite.”

“I think a lot has changed,” he said. “Fifteen years have passed. Americans attitudes toward the subject have changed in my view — fortunately for the good.”

A poll published by the Washington Post last week found that 75 percent of Americans now think gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military.

The number is up from 62 percent in 2001 and 44 percent in 1993.”

Even Donnelly agreed that there was a distinction between last week’s hearing and testimony in 1993, although she recalled the earlier hearings as being more “responsibly done.”

“People of different views were there,” she said. “All sides were represented and they took a very serious and close look at it.”

Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown University law professor who in 1993 was a policy adviser for the Campaign for Military Service, a group fighting to allow gays to serve openly, said one agenda or another always choreographs congressional hearings.

“In 1993, the hearings were choreographed by Sen. Nunn’s staff to ensure that the case was made to maintain the ban on the service of openly LGB service members,” Feldblum, a lesbian, said.

In contrast, last week’s hearing was designed to demonstrate why “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is flawed, she said.

“The bottom line is that hearings are always basically controlled and choreographed,” she said. “The difference is that, in 2008, the choreography is on our side.”

But supporters of open service may have to be patient if they want another hearing on military policy toward gays.

Aaron Hunter, spokesperson for the Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee that held last week’s hearing, said another hearing for the subcommittee on this issue is unlikely this session. Davis has talked about holding another hearing in the spring, he said.

Lara Battles, spokesperson for Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee and supporter “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” said the lawmaker has no statement on last week’s hearing and does not plan any full committee hearings. However, Battles said Skelton supports Davis’ decision to hold subcommittee hearings on the issue.

The offices of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), chair of that committee’s personnel subcommittee, also had no statements on last week’s testimony and were not making any plans for hearings. A Senate version of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act has not been introduced.

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