Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 28, 1993 TAG: 9301280137
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALEX MARSHALL LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
SAILORS FEARFUL, UNEASY ABOUT PRESENCE OF GAYS
At RC's Go-Go II, a windowless room where Navy men come to watch bikini-clad women on a stage, you might expect sentiment to run heavily against President Clinton's move to allow those with a different sexual preference into their ranks.And for the most part, it does.
"In our living quarters, we got three people to a rack," said Marty Byrne, 21, who sat at the Wards Corner club with a friend and a pitcher of beer, fiddling with a pool cue as he talked. "You got a [gay man] in there, he's going to be able to get at anyone he wants. And we got open showers."
Still, most people interviewed at two Navy hangouts were not as adamant as Byrne. They said they didn't hate gays - they simply feared serving with someone who was openly gay in quarters where they shower, sleep and undress together daily.
They liked that Gen. Colin Powell and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had gone to bat for them in Monday's extraordinary meeting with Clinton. But they said that, in the end, they would follow the orders of their commander in chief.
"I swore an oath to support the president's decisions," said Dave, a 25-year-old electronics technician. "But until that decision is made, I can say I'm against it."
Some of those interviewed did not want to be fully identified.
To talk with sailors about homosexuals is to confront levels of fear and uneasiness. Several said they didn't fear gays in the military so much as openly gay people serving. Lifting the ban, they fear, could be a green light for them to make sexual advances to heterosexuals.
John, a 20-year-old avionics technician who had parked himself with a friend and a bottle of beer in front of RC's raised stage, said he had worked with homosexuals in restaurants before joining the Navy and had nothing against them. But the military is different, he said.
"You're not only asking a heterosexual to work with that person, you're including that homosexual into your personal life," John said. "You not only work with them, you live with them.
"I try to be open-minded about it, because I've had friends who are homosexuals and people in my family."
At the Navy Exchange Mall inside Norfolk Naval Base, sentiments of 10 patrons interviewed were even stronger.
"If you think I'm going to stand there in the shower and let someone look at me with lust, you got another think coming," said Roger Spangler, a 42-year-old Navy reservist.
Spangler and a friend, Navy reservist Florence Hobbs, compared allowing homosexuals in the military with the days when blacks served in segregated units - but as a reason for keeping the ban, not lifting it.
Strong tensions between races led to last spring's violence in Los Angeles, they said, and race riots occurred on Navy ships as late as the 1960s. Clinton could not expect to solve similar tensions between homosexuals and heterosexuals with a stroke of a pen.