Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 17, 1993 TAG: 9302160224
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
FILMMAKERS LOOK AT GAYS IN WORLD WAR II
Allan Berube and Arthur Dong think the highly charged debate over the U.S. military's ban on gays lacks perspective - about 50 years and a world war's worth.Berube, author of "Coming out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two," and Dong, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, have teamed up to create a TV documentary based on Berube's book.
They have $310,000 in funding, including one of the few National Endowment for the Arts grants given in 1992 to a gay-themed project. They have a wealth of material drawn from Berube's 10 years of research. And they have a year of work ahead for a project they would like to see finished now.
"The media doesn't deal with the history of [the ban]. It deals with emotions and hysteria, the sensationalism of the issue. What we're trying to do with the film is to bring that history out," Dong said.
Gay soldiers' letters, rare film footage and government documents will be woven together to re-create the era of those caught in the anti-homosexual crusade and those who pursued it, said Dong and Berube.
Estimates put the number of gay men who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II at between 650,000 and 1.6 million, with a smaller number of lesbian enlistees.
It was an uneven, sometimes surreal course the military and soldiers found themselves navigating. Medical examiners administered a test to try to uncover homosexuals, asking searchingly, "Do you like girls?"
Gay and lesbian purges were conducted, Berube said, but the voracious wartime demand for troops saw the military keep homosexuals in by trying to reform them, segregate them in certain jobs or just turn a blind eye.
"Effeminate" draftees were viewed skeptically as a potential detriment. But military-sanctioned shows featuring soldiers decked out in drag were popular and high-profile.
The troops themselves generally were tolerant, Berube was told by gay veterans. They recalled taking more heat for being New Yorkers, Southerners, Jews or blacks than being homosexual.
Dong and Berube began work on their film for public television on Jan. 19. That was, ironically, the 50th anniversary of the military's first official anti-gay policy, notes Berube.
"It was a radical departure from the previous policy," said the San Francisco historian. "There had been no procedure to deal with homosexuals."
Instead, it was behavior - acts of sodomy - the military targeted, and a conviction meant imprisonment. Then, says Berube, medicine intervened in 1940 as the United States teetered on the brink of war.
"Psychiatrists were beginning to have much more influence. They said homosexuals were mentally disturbed, not criminal, and therefore shouldn't be punished," he said. "It was kind of a humane gesture. But the military only bought half of the idea, that they were sick."
Instead of prison, gays were punished with dishonorable discharges that stigmatized them. Benefits also were denied.
The total number of men and women discharged as homosexuals between 1941 and the late 1980s approached 100,000, Berube said. The impact is greater than the numbers reflect, he and Dong contend.
"The federal government in the 1950s based their anti-gay policies on the military policies. That's part of the story we're telling," Dong said. Gays themselves underwent a political change as well, he said.
"This is one of the first causes that gays and lesbians had to fight for. Many will say - this is up for debate - that this is the seed of modern gay and lesbian liberation, the fight for civil rights," said the Los Angeles filmmaker.
Dong, who received an Oscar nomination for his 1982 film "Sewing Woman," is directing "Coming Out Under Fire." He and Berube, who began fund raising two years ago, are sharing producing and writing duties.
In addition to $50,000 from the NEA, the project received a $250,000 grant from the nonprofit Independent Television Service, created by Congress to fund innovative TV programming. The city of Los Angeles pledged $10,000.
Berube said he welcomes the wider attention television could bring to his 1990 book. But for the World War II gay veterans who didn't live to see the reassessment, the point is moot, he said.
"That generation has had to go through a lot of suffering," he said. "I have friends who focused a large part of their life trying to get justice and never got it. For them, the wait was too long."