The following speech was prepared for the City Council hearing on a measure proposed by Ald. Tom Tunney to call for the lifting of the military's gay ban. It was delivered by Jean Albright, July 12, 2005. Albright is director of new media for Windy City Media Group.
First I want to thank Ald. Tunny for bringing up this question, and to thank you all for considering, No. 1, the rightness of making a recommendation in support of the Military Enhancement Readiness Act, and No. 2, the leadership position Chicago can take by voicing the attitude of midwestern people toward Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
I'm a 20-year Air Force veteran and member of the board of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is a small organization with a national network of supporters which has been fighting very hard since 1993 for the overturn of DADT.
Military policy attempting to keep gays and lesbians out of the military has changed over the decades. The fears and misunderstanding of gay people was explained in the terms and issues of each decade. And there was always a rationale, fit to that time and place, that was presented to justify the policy. The rationales have been updated as needed and yet some of the old familiar arguments still show up in today's discussions.
In 1945, an outright ban was put into formal policy, based on the the American Psychological Association's belief that gays and lesbians were mentally ill. The association did abandon that policy in later years.
In 1949 a new policy was articulated that stated that known gay and lesbian people constituted security risks, but in 1957 a report prepared for the Secretary of the Navy said that the idea that lesbian, gay and bisexual people, by their very natures, constituted risk, was without basis in fact. [ The Crittenden Report ]
The next justification, that of privacy and unit cohesion, was put on paper in 1981 when the DoD articulated the policy in a new form, declared homosexuality incompatible with military service and mandated 'Exclusion without Exception.' That was developed in response to a court's asking why Tech Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, a two-time Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient, had been kicked out. ( It was important to say 'No Exception' because, obviously, gay men were on the battlefield. And obviously, serving well. )
The issue of privacy could be trotted out in those days when there were group showers and open-bay barracks. ( Today, even in basic training, facilities now have individual showers and allow the individual much more privacy. I hate to even go to that topic because we're talking about professional soldiers in a professional situation. And rules and regulations which apply to bad behavior already apply to everyone. )
Then, in 1988, a report prepared for the Pentagon by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center said that same-sex or opposite sex-orientation are as unrelated to job performance as being left or right handed.
That report was buried until Rep. Gerry Studds obtained copies of it.
The ban continued. And good young sailorsbeing good at detecting the underlying meaning of the policymurdered Seaman Allen Schindler, an Illinois native, in 1992.
The rationales for the ban were updated regularly until Bill Clinton thought dropping the ban would be an obvious and logical thing to do. In 1993, while DADT was being drafted, the Rand Corporation found that there was no credible evidence to support exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the military. That report was not reflected in the rollout of the new policy.
In 1999, Private First Class Barry Winchell was beaten to death by fellow soldiers. It was sometime after that that the phrases Don't Harass, and Don't Pursue were added to the name of the policy.
In the decade of DADT, harassment has skyrocketed.
Anti-gay sentiment is codified, and good young soldiers can take a hint. Through harassment and targeted attacks, they feel free to carry out what seems to be the SPIRIT of the Policy:
A DOD Inspector General Survey done in 2000 showed a widespread anti-gay climate. Eighty percent overheard derogatory remarks about gay men, 37% witnessed or experienced targeted incidents of harassment, 9% witnessed threats, 5% witnessed physical assaults, and 57% had not received real training on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
While the name of the policy was intended to signify new limits to investigations and intent to respect privacy, the lack of training and general understanding as head to investigations that even commanders to no understand are illiegal.
It's a vicious circle: the person being harassed attempts to make a complaint, the commander or first sergeant asks the nature of the harassment and then interprets the answer as TELLING. Once the subject has come up, the victim becomes the accused.
This also has a disproportional affect on women: While women make up about 14% of the Army and Air Force, 34% of the discharges for homosexuality are given to women.
Since DADT, more than 10,000 people have been discharged at a cost of $191 million at a time when the military is not meeting its recruiting goals. ( Certain categories are not included so the cost is actually much higher. Even then, that 191 figure would otherwise fund the purchase of 8 Blackhawk helicopters OR armor for troops serving in Iraq. Where would you rather see that money go? )
There is no way to know how many good people decided to leave at the end of their first enlistment, or never joined at all.
Requests to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network are nearing 7,000. The number of requests each year is greater than the last.
The Boston Globe says that 79% of Americans now support gays serving openly in the military, up from 52% a decade ago. The Annenburg Foundation says that a majority of junior enlisted personnel now support gays serving openly in the military.
Senior military leaders have also called for repeal: General Wesley Clark, General Claudia Kennedy, General Pat Foote, and Admiral John Hutson.
Our troops are serving alongside openly gay agents of the CIA and FBI, as well as gay servicemembers from our foreign allies.
I've spoken about the policy, the rationale, and the climate. There are perhaps 65,000 gay and lesbian people serving now in that climate. I want you to know that there are 1 million gay and lesbian veterans, 65,000 in Illinois [ according to a recent study by the Urban Institute ] .
I'm very proud of Chicago's leadership in relating to its gay community and its military community.
I wish I could have known during my years in the Air Force that I'd even be in this room, discussing this change.
I hope Chicago's vote will be unanimous in support of overturning DADT, and replacing it with a policy under which gays and lesbians and bisexuals will be allowed to serve openly.