Gays in the Military Showers

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE SHOWERS, doesn't it? Sure, some experts defend the military's anti-gay policy with abstruse concepts like "unit cohesion." But those are just words. Behind the words is sexual anxiety about homosexuals. A retired Marine commandant who helped design President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy recently said on national television that he would be uncomfortable sharing "body heat" with a gay soldier on a cold battlefield.

It's tempting to laugh at the paranoia behind that kind of talk. But there is a serious question of sexual privacy here, one that has to be addressed if openly gay soldiers are to serve their country.

The argument has to start with a recognition of what the U.S. military is and what it is not. It is the most powerful and efficient killing machine in the world. That's a good thing for the liberties of more than 250 million people.

The U.S. military is not an extension of civil society in smart uniforms and shiny medals. Rights that civilians take for granted are routinely denied to military personnel. They are told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, where to live, what to do, what to say and what not to say, and they are stripped of privacy. These, too, are good things for the rest of us. Whatever we do in any area of military policy must preserve the effectiveness of our fighting force.

Defenders of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" argue that mixing gays and straights in the military's atmosphere of forced intimacy will threaten that effectiveness. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, sociology professor Charles Moskos offers an analogy to male-female relations. "Nowhere in our society are the sexes forced to undress in front of each other," he observes. So we segregate men from women in the military. "If we respect women's need for privacy from men, then we ought to respect those of heterosexuals with regard to homosexuals," Moskos argues.

Opponents of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" tend to dismiss this sexual privacy argument, and the male-female analogy in particular. One snickering response is that heterosexual men will now get the same unwanted sexual objectification they've given women for centuries. Unfortunately, that answer only reinforces the concerns it laughs at.

Another bad response goes to the other extreme, suggesting that gay soldiers will be asexual models of propriety. Let us in, it is suggested, and we won't make sexual advances or suggestions; we won't even look at our comrades in the showers.

Please.

Back in the real world where real people feel real sexual attraction while living and working in close quarters, what will it mean to have an openly gay man among all those glistening, athletic heterosexual male bodies?

We must first recognize that the issue is not, "Shall we let gays serve?" Gays have always served in the military and always will. The issue is, "Shall we let gays who serve be honest about being gay?"

We can segregate men from women, or exclude women, but either way we'll know who is who. The military can't effectively segregate gays, can't effectively exclude gays, and can't always know who is who. That makes the whole question different from rules governing men and women.

Under present policy, the straight soldier doesn't know who might be leering at him in the shower. So he has to wonder about everybody - hardly a reassuring prospect. Under a policy of openness, he'll have a better idea who might find some of his 2,000 body parts especially appealing. Thus, he can take whatever modest precautions are available to minimize his exposure.

Although openly gay soldiers will not be sexless, my hunch is they'll be hypersensitive to the perception that they're constantly on the make (a perception straight men don't always mind when it comes to women). So, unlike straight men drooling after women, openly gay military personnel will likely be especially careful not to let their eyes wander or their hands linger in places they're not welcome.

The male-female analogy also misses the gay-straight dynamic in important ways. In the male-female context, the anticipated sexual aggressors (heterosexual males) are in the majority. Their aggression is often approved and even encouraged by their peers. Under those circumstances, the need for formalized separation from the objects of their desire is understandable.

In the gay-straight context, on the contrary, the anticipated sexual aggressors (known gays) are a tiny minority of the whole. Their aggression is disapproved by their peers, and therefore far less likely to occur or be as intimidating when it does.

Because straight men and women are the overwhelming majority in the military, the expected problems associated with mixing them in close quarters would be frequent and widespread. Mixing straights with a tiny number of openly gay personnel, on the other hand, would occasion comparatively few incidents. To say it would impair the military's effectiveness is silly.

Too, the military separates men and women because it rightly assumes that at least some of the attraction between them will be mutual. We separate straight men and women because they can't keep their hands off each other.

Yet straight men, some of whom recoil even at homosexual body heat, would be the first to say they'll be strictly hands-off with gay men. I say let's take them at their word.

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