Corps/Corpse: The U.S. Military and Homosexuality

IN 1992, U.S. presidential candidate William Jefferson Clinton proposed lifting the ban against gays and lesbians openly serving in the United States military, and during the next several months, he was dialectically enjoined by military representatives, members of Congress, political activists, pundits, and many others. A compromise policy, the notorious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," emerged, was approved by Congress, and signed by President Clinton in November 1993 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994. Rather than abating political controversy, however, the policy catalyzed bouts of debate over the qualities of the U.S. military and the characteristics of gays and lesbians. Discharged gay and lesbian soldiers have challenged the policy in courts as their numbers increased each year between 1996 and 2001, a trend only recently reversed in 2002 ("Military Discharged," 2003). Furthermore, news reports tell of six student linguists, gay soldiers training as Arabic translators, who were dismissed from the military just months after Bush Administration and military officials' post-September 11 lamentations that there were too few Arabic translators in the military.1