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The ban against homosexuals is applied capriciously, resulting in both considerable harassment and occasional discretion. The experience of Janet, an Army medic and private first class, is typical of the former. Janet was drinking off duty at Hula's, a gay hangout in Hawaii, when she was stopped by a courtesy patrol. "From that time on," she says, "I felt they were watching me." Inspectors would burst into her room at 2 a.m., seeking to catch her in a compromising position. Though she was never caught in flagrante delicto, her sergeant accused her of being gay because she had no boyfriends. Janet's assignments deteriorated. Most punishing was a three-month posting to the field for maneuvers that involved 10,000 men -- and Janet.
At the other extreme was the experience of Eliseo Martinez, a former Marine sergeant who came out of the closet halfway through his six-year tour at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California. One day one of his men called another a "faggot." Martinez suggested to the name-caller that he seemed insecure about his own sexuality. Later, Martinez was called in by his commanding officer, who requested details of the clash, then asked if he could pose a question. "Are you gay?" he asked. "Yes, sir," Martinez replied. "Well," the commander said, "you're still doing a good job, Marine." The issue never came up again.
More typically, matters are not confronted directly. Antigay servicemen single out targets, spreading rumors behind their back, carving butt pirate and die faggot on their lockers and spraying their beds with sexual lubricant. To avoid becoming a target, gay men sometimes play along, trying to mask their pain. They smirk gamely at gay jokes and go to lengths to cloak their true identity. Some invent girlfriends or wives, or even date women. Blatant lies about sexual orientation, however, risk perjury charges if a homosexual comes under investigation. Most, therefore, simply disclose nothing about their personal life. "The result is you don't waste much time and you appear to be very serious about your assignments," says a gay Army attorney.
Female personnel tend to be more tolerant of their lesbian colleagues. "You aren't hearing it from women because women are more accepting about lesbians," says Mary Ann Humphrey, a former captain in the Army reserves who was discharged in 1987. "Their womanhood is not threatened like a man's manhood is when he's around a gay man." Perhaps women's experience with male sexual harassment has made them less skittish about other forms of torment. Or perhaps it is simply less taboo for women to hug and kiss in public.
That doesn't mean lesbians have it easy. According to Humphrey, who wrote a history of homosexuals in the U.S. military titled My Country, My Right to Serve, women are expelled 10 times as often as men for their sexual orientation. Amy, a medical corpsman at the Naval Training Center in Orlando, Florida, feels so threatened that she pretends to date a male gay friend of hers. "I grab crotches, I make sexual innuendos," she says. "The more they suspect, the more I try to cover up." Recently, a married male officer made overtures. She did not file a sexual-harassment report because she feared "an investigation will ensue and my homosexuality will come out."