The Comment Factory

Darren Manzella

Depending on your point of view Army Sergeant Darren Manzella is either extremely foolhardy or extremely brave. In 2008 he appeared on CBS’s flaghship investigative program 60 minutes and talked openly about his homosexuality. In 1993 President Bill Clinton had adopted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays in the military which stipulated that they must keep quiet about their orientation or risk discharge. Manzella was opposed to what he saw as a discriminatory law and carried through on his principles. Manzella told CBS that he had taken his boyfriend out with his army pals and painted a picture of a military that had come to accept gay members for who they were, reporting a lack of discrimination or care for his openness.

He was eventually the target of a malicious anonymous email campaign that instructed him to tone down his “ostentatious” behavior. Manzella decided to consult his commanding officer who told that for the crime of telling the truth he would have to report Manzella to his superiors. “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights,” he said. “What a Catch-22. You go and tell your lieutenant the truth and now you violated the Army’s rule.” True to his trailblazing attitude, Manzella held nothing back in the investigation, providing photos of him with AJ, his boyfriend, including ones of them kissing. But despite all this, Manzella was told to resume work in the military. “The closest thing that I was given by my superiors was, “I don’t care if you’re gay or not,” Manzella said.

Even after the CBS show aired on national television Manzella was allowed to stay in the military, until in 2008 he was eventually discharged as the case had become increasingly embarrassing for the military to ignore. But they had wanted to ignore i — and there are thousands more Manzella’s with slightly less balls who are serving openly in the US military. This new liberalism in the US military has come under the stewardship of one of the most reactionary and anti-gay Presidents in living memory. Looking at he number of discharges of gay servicemembers, it is clear that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy didn’t change much, it took the chronic troop shortages to really open the floodgates for gay civil rights. In 2001, 640 soldiers were discharged for homosexuality. By 2006, the number dropped to 282 – a 56 percent reduction.

Bleu Copas, 24, was another model soldier. Recruited in 2002, he transferred to Fort Bragg, N.C., two years later and became part of the renowned 82nd Airborne division. Fit, well-educated, and patriotic, he had only one obstacle to overcome. He was gay. Copas, from Johnson City, Tenn., denied his orientation was ever an issue. “Throughout my whole time in the military, my colleagues realized my orientation, but it was never a problem,” he said. He even claimed that half the residents of his barracks in Monterey, Calif., seemed to be gay. “There are several that I know serving openly in the desert right now.”

And, although Copas was honorably discharged two years ago with full health benefits as a result of another particularly vicious e-mail campaign to out him, Copas views his discharge as increasingly archaic. “I think, ironically, everything now is falling into place regarding discrimination against homosexuals. I was the victim of a very aggressive campaign. I would have been fine otherwise,” he said.
“I think that people will look at Afghanistan and Iraq as the moment when lesbian and gay service members prove themselves to be part of military,” said Victor Maldonado, a spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that campaigns against military discrimination against homosexuals. “More and more service members are serving openly and having no repercussions. They simply are gay, and it evidently does not affect their relationship with their colleagues or command.”

The attitudes of the American population have changed markedly too. In a 2007 Washington Post-ABC News poll 75% of Americans said they believe that gay people who are open about their sexuality should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62% in 2001 and 44% in 1993. Support from Republicans has doubled over 15 years from 32 to 64%, while one-in-eight Democrats now support the idea. Even among troops attitudes are increasingly liberal: a 2007 Zogby poll found 73% of troops who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan were comfortable in the presence of gays, which it is estimated number 65,000 in the US military.

A USA Today leader from March 2007 goes further, saying that:

“Under the 14-year-old policy, recruits aren’t questioned about their sexual orientation (don’t ask) but are discharged from the military if they engage in homosexual conduct or admit to being gay (don’t tell). Since 1994, nearly 11,000 troops — the equivalent of an Army division — have been dismissed, including several Arabic or Farsi-speaking translators who are badly needed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That makes no sense. When the policy was implemented, it was an uncomfortable compromise — President Clinton wanted gays to be allowed to serve openly, but he faced a backlash from Congress and from military officials. Today, with the military stretched thin and changed public attitudes, it’s time to dump the policy and put anti-discrimination standards into place.”

That said, parts of the military brass have come out forcefully against any further softening of the attitude towards homosexuality. Gen. Peter Pace, who was the chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff in 2006, told the Chicago Tribune that he believed homosexuality to be immoral, comparing it with adultery. Another former Joint Chief of Staff, John M. Shalikashvili, who served in that role from 1993 to 1997 wrote an important op-ed in the New York Times taking the opposite view to Pace: he called for outright ban on discrimination.

“When I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I supported the current policy because I believed that implementing a change in the rules at that time would have been too burdensome for our troops and commanders I still believe that to have been true. The concern among many in the military was that given the longstanding view that homosexuality was incompatible with service, letting people who were openly gay serve would lower morale, harm recruitment and undermine unit cohesion,” he wrote. His conclusion however was this: ” I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces. Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.”

Here the civil rights issue is merely an ancillary to the larger purpose of summoning more reserves of troops. But there’s also a fiduciary concern: the US military has spent more than $363 million since 1994 to throw out gay servicemembers.

In the year that US banned homosexuals from the military, 1993, Israel did the opposite and opened up their military to homosexuals, who now compose 2%. “It’s a non-issue,” said David Saranga, a former IDF officer. “There is not a problem with your sexual tendency. You can be a very good officer, a creative one, a brave one, and be gay at the same time.” The British were a bit later, admitting gay soldiers in 2000, and the change has had no effect at all on the cohesion or morale of the forces. The US has implied the same change implicitly, but under Obama it’s time to be explicit about it.