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One ostensible reason is protection, on the theory that civilians cannot tolerate seeing women in wheelchairs or body bags. Another argument is that women lack the strength or endurance for battlefield tasks, although many jobs from which they are excluded have no specific standards. In any case, the practical effect of excluding women from combat, which contributes to promotion, is to slow their rise up the career ladder.
Military service by homosexuals is nothing new either, although the untold thousands who have served have had to remain deeply closeted -- or rely on the sympathy and discretion of superior officers who sometimes risked their own careers in protecting gays beneath them. Chuck Schoen of Clear Lake, California, head of a local gay-veterans chapter, last week sent a letter to President-elect Clinton commending him on the plan to drop the ban. Promised Schoen: "You will not hear the explosion of a Mardi Gras celebration but a sigh of relief from thousands of men and women." Schoen mentioned his own 19 years of Navy service, which began in World War II and ended with his forced departure, because of his sexual orientation, in 1963.
For Schoen, the time for reinstatement has passed, but for other gay veterans the question is more urgent. Petty Officer Keith Meinhold, 30, who resumed a 12-year Navy career when a federal court ordered him reinstated despite his homosexuality -- which he says he discovered only after years in uniform -- asserted that he was being subjected to unusual daily uniform and haircut inspections and other close scrutiny. Former Staff Sergeant Thomas Paniccia filed suit in U.S. District Court in Arizona last week to salvage his 11-year career, which ended in October after he, like Meinhold, acknowledged his homosexuality on national television. Former Naval Academy student Joseph Steffan is suing to reverse his ouster just weeks before his scheduled graduation in 1987. Former Army National Guard Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, a Vietnam veteran who served 26 years until she was identified as a lesbian, is suing to get her job back.
Depending on how Clinton's Executive Order is phrased and how the courts interpret it, many of the gay men and lesbians forced out during the Reagan- Bush era -- nearly always because their preference was revealed or suspected by colleagues, not because of actual sexual misconduct or because they made statements to the media -- may file similar claims. The problems of accommodating them, making amends for time lost and potentially providing back pay and benefits worry even military leaders who feel temperate about the basic issue.