Seemingly out of nowhere, the Pentagon announced this week that it would lift its ban on women in combat. Just like that. No years-long Washington lobbying campaign, no protracted national culture-war debate, no threats by conservatives in Congress to do everything humanly possible to block progress -- in other words, nothing like the decades-long fight the nation saw over letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.
The differences between the two political battles are stark, yet the substance of the two debates has great overlap. In both cases, advocates of equality pointed out that merit and ability to do the job should be more important than the cultural beliefs of one segment of society, and they showed that there was no research indicating that equal treatment harmed the military. Opponents of both open gays and women in combat cited concerns about military effectiveness, suggesting -- but never proving -- that reform carried great risk to the military and thus to national security.
Yet in both cases, just below these surface arguments lay the cultural and moral concerns that turned out to be the real source of resistance to change. Charlie Moskos, the late sociologist who coined the term "don't ask, don't tell" and championed the policy, justified the ban, in part, by pointing to gender segregation in the military. "If you had open gays," he once said, "you'd probably have the same harassment problems as you do among men and women." Moskos publicly rooted his opposition in the threat to unit cohesion that open service by gays allegedly posed, but more quietly he spoke of high-minded but meaningless phrases like "natural law" and the "moral right" that straight people have not to encounter gay people. "I'm just against that," he said of letting gays serve openly, as he tied his personal rule to gender separation. "I should not be forced to shower with a woman; I shouldn't be forced to shower with an open gay." Ultimately he acknowledged, "It's a cultural issue in this country that women shouldn't be compelled to go into combat, shouldn't kill people."
In the early 1990s Congress repealed a ban on women in combat planes, against the opposition of some in the military. General Merrill McPeak, then a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later an adviser to Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, opposed women in combat and open service by gays. But he acknowledged that his views on both were rooted in cultural rather than military concerns. He told Congress he had "personal prejudices" against women in combat and opposed it "even though logic tells us" such opposition is groundless. He even admitted that he would choose an inferior man over a qualified woman even if it made for a "militarily less effective situation," saying, "I admit it doesn't make much sense, but that's the way I feel about it." Later, during Obama's campaign, McPeak caused a stir by opposing the candidate's position on ending "don't ask, don't tell." Nevertheless, McPeak once again made it clear that his opposition was personal and had nothing to do with military effectiveness. To lift the ban, he explained in 2008, "the service leadership will have to go to the gay and lesbian annual ball and lead the first dance," and he did not believe leaders would -- or should -- rise to the occasion. MORE!
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