US Military Underplays Anti-Gay Violence

US Military Underplays Anti-Gay Violence
06.10.04

(Santa Barbara, California) A draft report prepared for the University of California research program shows that despite official Pentagon assertions that the military takes anti-gay harassment as seriously as harassment against women and racial minorities, the military's policies and practices reveal markedly different enforcement and deterrent efforts for these three forms of abuse.
The report, titled "The Practical and Conceptual Problems with Regulating Harassment in a Discriminatory Institution," was commissioned by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military University of California, Santa Barbara.

Senior Pentagon officials repeatedly have insisted that the military seeks to deter and punish all forms of abuse. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Kenneth Bacon, for example, noted in 1999 that "there's no room for harassment in the military. And this applies to harassment based on race, harassment based on sex, and harassment based on sexual orientation. ... [J]ust as racial harassment is inappropriate, harassment based on sexual orientation is inappropriate ... "

But, according to Sharon Terman, author of the new 39-page report, the Pentagon's policies and practices all demonstrate far more meaningful efforts on the part of the military to prevent racial and sexual harassment than anti-gay harassment.

The draft report was released a day after a secret government report was uncovered details soaring rates of gay harassment in the Australian Defense Forces. (story) That report accused the Austrialian military of doing little to combat the problem.

Terman examined training and education within the military in the areas of harassment, the way incidents were measured ad reported, the way they were processed, and whether the military acted to prevent retaliation and ensure accountability.

He report shows that regardless of military leaders' intentions, the gay ban itself prevents the armed forces from deterring anti-gay abuse. Terman says that the failure to prevent anti-gay abuse "results from the practical and conceptual problems with regulating harassment in a discriminatory institution."

According to Tobias Barrington Wolff, Assistant Professor at U.C. Davis Law School and Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School, "Terman's findings are disturbing, but not surprising. Harrassment is a form of discrimination, and the military continues to pursue an official policy of discrimination toward soldiers who are gay or lesbian. We won't eliminate the harassment until we eliminate the inequality."

The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military is an official research unit of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Terman completed her law degree at Stanford University Law School in 2004.