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The conflict between gays and the military is a tinderbox, not least because each side sees itself as an embattled minority culture much misunderstood and views the other as a privileged beneficiary of special treatment. Further bedeviling the issue is that each side is partly right. The military case against openly permitting homosexuals is, in essence, that they will cause discomfort to the heterosexual majority already in place, especially if gay soldiers become more open in asserting their sexual preferences. The progay case, as articulated by Clinton, is that they can make a contribution and the country can use the help; in this vision, the military cannot stand in isolation but must keep pace with the fitfully changing social attitude toward acceptance of homosexuals that has evolved over the past two decades.
Stated in such stark terms, the question seems to revolve around prejudice, with one side denouncing it and the other saying it is a fact of life that even a permissive society must bow to. Not surprisingly, it has become fashionable to equate the situation of gays now with that of blacks when President Truman fully integrated the armed forces by Executive Order in 1948. "People said blacks and whites couldn't serve together," observes Naval Academy professor Paul Roush. "It was generally accepted that blacks couldn't do the work and whites wouldn't serve alongside them. We got beyond that, and now the armed forces are integrated."
But homosexuals are different, because sexuality is different. It can sometimes be a more deeply emotional part of identity than race -- and a more ambiguous one. Most people identify with one race, while sexuality can be more complex. Many heterosexuals have some homosexual experience, frequently at the young-adult age of military recruits, and the aftermath is often guilt or fear. Some of the people who are most uncomfortable around open homosexuals worry that such impulses are part of their own nature. Moreover, many young men think that having another man show sexual interest implies something unwelcome about their own sexuality; often they feel obliged to answer with violence rather than polite refusal. Sexuality also has profound religious implications. Expressing it outside heterosexual marriage is, for millions of Americans, a flat-out sin; many believers feel they should carry those values into the workplace, especially a workplace that is itself a life-style, like the military.
Above all, sexuality has to do with intimacy, especially physical intimacy, and military service can be intensely intimate. Troops share dorm rooms and showers in peacetime and pit latrines in battle. Says Naval Reserve Lieut. Commander Dave Frey of Chicago: "You may be at sea for 90 days. If people are looking over their shoulder wondering, 'What is the other person in the berth or shower thinking about me?' the potential for problems is great."