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The New York Times
Changing Views on
Gays in the Military
By ROBIN TONER, ON
THE RECORD, nytimes on the Web, June 7, 2007
Bill Clinton’s promise to lift the
ban on gays in the military provoked one of the most wrenching fights of his
first year in office. It roiled his relationships with Congress and the
military, consumed huge amounts of political capital, and ultimately ended in an
uneasy compromise: “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
So it was noteworthy and politically telling, 14 years later, when the eight
Democratic candidates at a contentious debate in New Hampshire seemed in utter
agreement on one thing: It was time to return to that original promise to
allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military. It was time to
repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allows them to serve if they keep quiet
about their sexual orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the most forceful, describing her
husband’s compromise as “a transition policy” and “an important first step” that
was no longer “the best way for us as a nation to proceed.” She quoted
Barry Goldwater that, “you don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.”
Senator Joseph Biden chimed in, saying that General Peter Pace, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was “flat wrong” when he recently warned that
repealing this policy would be bad for the military. “Nobody asked anybody
else whether they’re gay” on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.
When the moderator, Wolf Blitzer of CNN, asked for a show of hands on repeal,
every hand went up in support.
By contrast, when the same question came up on Tuesday night in the Republican
debate, not a single candidate expressed support for allowing openly gay men and
women to serve in the military. Most said the current policy was working
well and should not be changed. Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts,
who had been publicly critical of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1994, said he had
been wrong then and that he would leave the policy in place.
Among the Democrats, the willingness to change course tracks a substantial
change in public attitudes on several gay rights questions over the past decade.
According to the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of Americans favored allowing
gays to serve openly in the military in 1994, while 45 percent opposed it.
By 2006, that majority had grown to 60 percent, while 32 percent opposed the
idea. A similar shift occurred on the question of whether school boards
should be allowed to fire gay teachers; in 1987, 51 percent said yes, a figure
that fell to 28 percent earlier this year.
Much of the shift in attitudes is generational. “Age is a huge factor,”
said Michael Dimock at Pew. Younger people were, in fact, more tolerant
toward gays in the military than their elders in 1994, when 56 percent of the
18-to-29-year-olds supported allowing gays to serve openly, compared to 47
percent of those aged 50 to 64. But that trend intensified over the next
decade: 72 percent of the 18-to-29 age group supported lifting the ban by
2006.
Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime leader on
gay rights issues, said that supporters of the ban had long argued that young
soldiers could not handle serving with openly gay men and women. “But it’s
precisely in that age bracket that there’s been the biggest change,” he said.
Familiarity is another factor, pollsters say. A recent Pew survey found
that four in ten Americans now say they have close friends or family members who
are gay; this was closely correlated with more tolerant attitudes on gay
marriage and gays in the workplace.
And there is a partisan connection: people who are Democrats tend to be
most supportive on gay rights. Eighty-five percent of those who consider
themselves liberal Democrats support lifting the ban according to the 2006
survey, as do 64 percent of the conservative to moderate Democrats and 66
percent of the independents. By contrast, just 36 percent of the
conservative Republicans felt that way.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the gay advocacy group,
said he sees “a sea change” in attitudes reflected in the Democratic field, “so
much unity around issues like workplace discrimination and ‘don’t ask, don’t
tell.”’ He said he was struck in the debate that, “everybody spoke up
forcefully and really embraced the conversation.”
This unity among the Democrats breaks down, though, on the question of same sex
marriage, which Pew found in a poll earlier this year remained deeply divisive
in the party — 49 percent say they favor it, while 43 percent oppose it.
(Republicans overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage.) Analysts say those
divisions are reflected, in turn, in the careful positioning of the Democratic
candidates; in a recent survey by the Human Rights Campaign, only one of the
seven candidates responding — Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio — offered a
blanket endorsement of same-sex marriage.
But all of the candidates said the federal government should acknowledge
same-sex marriages or other legal unions recognized by the states, when it comes
to the federal benefits and tax treatments linked to marriage. Mrs.
Clinton, for example, said she would support a repeal of the provision in the
Defense of Marriage Act, signed by her husband, that “may prohibit the federal
government” from providing those benefits.
It is worth remembering, of course, that this is a Democratic primary, when
candidates are competing for the support of the most liberal voters. The
true test of how much the nation has changed on these issues will come in a
general election, and, of course, in a new administration. If a Democrat
prevails, he (or she) may face much of the same resistance that President
Clinton did in 1993. Many of the same members of Congress, for example,
are still there, and General Pace recently indicated that resistance has not
disappeared from the top ranks of the military. Still, for a few moments
on the stage in Manchester, there was unanimity.
Posted June 6, 2007
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