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In truth, the everyday military experience is not likely to change much after the ban is lifted. Just because being gay will no longer be grounds for expulsion does not mean that every gay in the military will come out of the closet. Some will fear harassment; some will simply prefer discretion, the way gay civilians generally do. In all likelihood the vast majority of gays in uniform will keep their sexuality largely private. They will simply stop living in fear that someone may find out and cost them their future. Those who might wish to be flamboyant or confrontational would probably not prosper regardless of sexual preference, because their personalities do not suit a top-down command structure. For the most part, gays seek to serve for the same patriotic and pragmatic reasons that heterosexuals do, and they tend to feel as deeply committed to the military culture as to their sexuality.
Similarly, it is unclear that the presence of avowed homosexuals will adversely affect recruiting. Certainly some people join the military because it seems an outpost of rigidity in an increasingly permissive world, and some parents urge sons to join to toughen them and imbue them with traditional manly values. But when men and women in the enlisted ranks are asked why they joined, they cite pay, training and educational benefits. Those same matters are emphasized in recruitment brochures; only TV ads still play on male bonding. Says Peter Morrison, a military demographer with the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, California: "Most look at the military as a way to bootstrap their way up."
Still, a difficult period of adjustment seems inevitable. As has been evident in the bumpy transition to involving more women, changes are hard to make work when the senior officers responsible for them are openly opposed. The experience with women underscores another basic problem, succinctly voiced by Captain Harry Walters of the Army National Guard engineers unit in Fargo, North Dakota: "In the civilian world you just work with your peers, but we live with them."
President-elect Clinton is being urged to go slow, to put off the effective date of change. Some of that is an attempt to buy time to lobby so that change will never come. Some is sincere concern about disrupting the nation's defenses. But before Clinton agrees to any delay, he must answer a question implied in his own statements. If it will be wrong in the future to exclude gays and destroy the careers of those in place, how can it possibly be right now?