Posted by Eugene Volokh:
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Lesbians:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_01-2005_05_07.shtml#1115397536
I'm puzzled about how the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy --
or for that matter, any exclusion policy -- can be justified as to
lesbians. As I understand it, the main argument in favor of such a
policy for male homosexuals is that in all-male or nearly-all-male
combat units the possibility of sexual tension may undermine unit
effectiveness. I'm skeptical about this argument, but it at least
seems plausible.
Yet it doesn't seem to apply to lesbians, since presumably they would
very rarely be serving in all-female units, and never in all-female
combat units. Moreover, even if we set aside antidiscrimination
arguments and focus solely on military effectiveness (which may or may
not be the right approach, but let's use it here), it seems lesbians
would tend to make better soldiers than straight women:
1. They are less likely to get pregnant.
2. They seem less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases.
3. If the stereotypes about lesbians tending to act in more masculine
ways are generally accurate -- hard to tell, for obvious
measurement reasons, but that seems to be the conventional wisdom
-- then that cuts further in favor of lesbians as opposed to
straight women. Many women may well make great soldiers, but if
we're speaking about generalities, and the military policy is
generally defended using generalizations, I'm happy to at least
tentatively assume (as I suspect would the military) that
stereotypically masculine traits and attitudes tend to be more
useful for soldiering than stereotypically feminine ones.
Is it just that the military fears that straight soldiers will so
dislike lesbians that this itself would cause morale problems? I guess
that just doesn't strike me as that factually plausible. Is it that
the military wants to treat male and female homosexuals equally, for
fairness or public relations reasons? That seems odd: Can it really be
that discriminating against homosexuals is just fine, discriminating
against women (as the military long has done, and still in
considerable measure does) is just fine, but discriminating based on
sex among homosexuals is wrong, even when there's a perfectly sensible
argument for such discrimination? Or is there something else I'm
missing here?
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