Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070259
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID WOOD NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
WOMEN IN MILITARY FAVOR END OF GAY BAN AND `LESBIAN BAITING'
The furious debate about gays in the military has overlooked an important part of the military population: its 205,571 uniformed women, many of whom agree with President Clinton that the ban on gays ought to be lifted.Pioneers in the unfinished quest to achieve true equality in the armed services and the victims of a continuing torrent of sexual harassment, all but a few women have chosen to remain silent on the issue of gays.
Privately, however, many officers and enlisted women echo the sentiments of Army Maj. Carol Barkalow, who was among the first women to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1980.
"As U.S. citizens, each individual has a right to serve the country," says Barkalow, who currently serves as a logistics planner on the Army staff in Washington. "The strength of our military is that we have taken diverse people, put them together and have won on the battlefield. It all depends on leadership."
Beyond that simple principle, however, are other more practical considerations. One is that the Defense Department policy of summarily discharging gays hurts heterosexual women as well as gays.
Some women who have turned down sexual advances from their superiors say they have been accused of being lesbians and discharged, often with little or no evidence. They say this practice, known as "lesbian baiting," is widespread.
Some women are also permitting themselves a certain bittersweet glee at the prospect of seeing men having to deal with sexual harassment as women have for decades.
"Men are terrified to think that they may be looked at [by gay soldiers] in the same way that men look at women," says Michelle Benecke, a reserve air defense missile officer.
In the unlikely event that straight military men will get propositioned by gay soldiers, Benecke says, "they'll just have to deal with it the way we women have dealt with it for all these years."
Military women also seem less uncomfortable than men about serving with homosexuals. Some suggest this is "a guy problem."
"Women can be friendly, hug and even kiss and nobody says anything, but if two men display affection - God - it's on the news," says Mary Ann Humphrey, a captain in the Army reserves until she was discharged as a lesbian.
Military women say the practice of lesbian-baiting is widespread. But there is little statistical evidence to prove that women who refuse male sexual advances or who aggressively assert their authority are regularly accused of being lesbians and discharged.
The Defense Department last year discharged 708 military personnel for homosexuality. Of those, 166, or 23 percent, were women, even though they make up only 11.5 percent of the force.
While women say they can be discharged for homosexuality on mere hearsay evidence, Pentagon records do not indicate how many of these women contest the charges or what kind of evidence was used to justify the discharges. Women wrongly discharged as lesbians declined to speak publicly about their experiences.
The more insidious effect of the gay ban, many women say, may be on the women who stay in the ranks, where whispered accusations of homosexuality often are used to undermine women's authority and stunt their careers.
Victoria Hudson, a 33-year-old Army reserve officer, says her fellow officers spread rumors that she was a lesbian after she refused the sexual advances of a superior officer while serving as operations officer in a military police battalion during the Persian Gulf War.
Although she passed a rigorous background check for a top security clearance, the rumors made it extremely difficult for her to enforce discipline and high professional standards, she says.
Hudson and other military women say they know of cases where women have consented to the sexual demands of their superiors in desperate attempts to stop the lesbian rumors.
"The fear that the gay ban imposes - the fear of being thrown out, the fear of being labeled - is used to intimidate women into sexual activity they otherwise wouldn't engage in, and it's used to undermine their authority," says Hudson. "Take away the ban on gays, take away the fear, and the morale and professionalism of military units will go up."
"Lifting the gay ban isn't treating a specific minority population as a special case - it's enabling the military to operate professionally," says Hudson.