Should laws permit homosexuals to serve in the armed forces?

Pro: All citizens should have equal opportunities and responsibilities to serve in the armed forces. And homosexuals ought to have more than just permission to join. Everyone ought to treat homosexuals throughout their careers no differently from heterosexuals.

Reply: Denying homosexuals the permission to serve in the military does not deprive them of any fundamental right, that is, any right to political liberty, access to the means for satisfying basic needs, to housing, health care, dignity, respect.

Pro: An unjustly discriminatory policy leads to a waste of talent, a loss of exemplary individuals who are highly motivated to perform well in the armed forces. By refusing to accept avowed homosexuals and by discharging those who come out of the closet, the military has lost and will continue to lose valuable personnel.

Con: Permitting homosexuals to serve in the armed forces would result in harassment of or even violence against gays and lesbians.

Reply: While blacks "for their protection" might be restrained from associating with (certain) whites, such an action is only justified in limited circumstances where the safety of individuals is at stake. Segregation, while sensible as a practical matter on these occasions, is fundamentally unjust. Whites have to acknowledge the rights of blacks freely to associate with members of all races. Likewise, heterosexuals have to acknowledge the rights of homosexuals freely to associate with individuals of various sexual preferences.

Con: Homosexuals disrupt the proper functioning of their military units. The concern here is not only that they might disturb others with their sexual advances, but also that those who are prejudiced against them may not work well with them. The presence of homosexuals in military units is likely to cause the destruction of morale, a weakening of the cohesion of the units, and an overall reduction of fighting effectiveness.

Reply: The failure of heterosexuals to support homosexuals is not a sufficient reason to deny homosexuals any right. Everyone must recognize and respect the rights of others.

Con: Permitting homosexuals to serve in the armed forces would make maintaining adequate numbers of troops difficult, for many heterosexuals would leave the military or decline even to enter a military service that accepts homosexuals.

Reply: These are the main pragmatic concerns of the military. While they are pressing in the short run, they are not very substantial as philosophical issues, because they are easily answered: Education and training can change inappropriate attitudes.

Con: In the military services, people live in close association with each other. Heterosexuals are likely to feel uncomfortable in the presence of homosexuals.

Reply: Prejudiced people may be uncomfortable in the presence of some others. But discomfort is not an adequate justification for any policy of segregation.

Con: Homosexuals may be blackmailed; therefore they are threats to security.

Reply: The presence of gays in the military entails a risk to security only in a society where homosexuality is something to be hidden or denied. Anyone who might face disciplinary action or lose a position when his or her homosexuality is revealed is vulnerable to blackmail. But this is so only as long as a homosexual presence is against policy. Were the policy a policy of acceptance, revelation could cause no harm, for the leadership of the military would impose no sanction. The answer to "I'm going to blackmail you" could become "So what?"

Con: The costs associated with investigating allegations of homosexual orientation and behavior make any tolerance of avowed homosexuals in the military impractical. Detailed investigations into the lives of military personnel to determine whether they are homosexual waste time and money.

Reply: Where a person is unknown as a homosexual, no attempt at detection, let alone discrimination, ought to be made. Acceptance of homosexuals in the military makes investigations of sexual orientation unnecessary.

Con: The military cannot afford to be blind to sexual differences. Moreover, it is justified in regarding ('mere') sexual orientation or preference, in contrast to sexual behavior, as a basis for rational discrimination among individuals within the armed forces. The desire and indeed the right of individuals for privacy must be honored.

Men typically have sexual interests in women, and because this is so (despite some exceptions), policies are established to exclude an entire group—all adults with male genitalia—from lavatories and locker rooms reserved for females out of regard for the wishes of females for privacy. Women at times prefer not to perform such actions (for which partially disrobing is only the prelude) as might gain the slightest sexual attention from a normal human being.

Such policies, based as they are on the mere identification of an adult as a member of the opposite sex (because adults presumably have interests in the opposite sex), are reasonable. But note: Being a male is not a sufficient reason for being excluded from females' lavatories or locker rooms. A woman who brings her male infant into a women's lavatory to change the boy's diaper meets no objection on the grounds of the sex of the child.

But being a male with a normal sexual interest in women is a sufficient reason for being excluded from females' lavatories or locker rooms. Possession of a particular type of genitalia is a practical way of sorting people out, even though sexual identification is not really the issue. The issue is sexual preference.

Homosexuals who announce their homosexuality enable all to distinguish their sexual orientation with a high degree of accuracy—higher accuracy than anatomical differentiation would allow. Their presence can be known, therefore. And as a woman might not wish to reveal parts of her body to a man, a man might not wish to reveal parts of his body to a gay man for the same reason. Many heterosexual men are expressing their discomfort with the idea of being viewed as sex objects, when they have no interest in assuming that role, or when they have no reciprocal interest in the people who have a sexual interest in them. (Incidentally, some heterosexual men who confront the issue of gays in the military may well have an increase in their empathy for women who have complained of being treated on occasion exclusively as sex objects.)

Consider the following arguments, which show the possible consequences of policies which do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation:

Argument A
1. Our policy will not discriminate by sexual orientation. (People will not be distinguished by their sexual preferences.)
2. X is a homosexual.
3. Because we will not discriminate by sexual preference, X is permitted to shower with persons for whom X has a sexual attraction.
4. X is a man.
5. X is permitted to shower with men.

Argument B
1. Our policy will not discriminate by sexual orientation. (People will not be distinguished by their sexual preferences.)
2. Y is a heterosexual.
3. Because we will not discriminate by sexual preference, Y is permitted to shower with persons for whom Y has a sexual attraction.
4. Y is a man.
5. Y is permitted to shower with women.

If policy-makers reject B, because women are likely generally to disagree with it, they should stop and consider A before approving it uncritically. If substantial numbers of men are likely generally to disagree with this policy, it ought not to be accepted. If the concerns of men who oppose the policy were labeled prudish and homophobic and then dismissed, the similar concerns of women could as easily be labeled and disregarded the same way. This should not happen. The aim here is the balancing of rights—specifically the rights of homosexuals not to be prejudicially excluded from the military service and those of heterosexuals not to have privacy violated.

Pro: The policy that excludes homosexuals from the military is similar to the discredited policy of racism supported by military authorities in the past.

Reply: The policy of excluding homosexuals from military service is not the same as the policy of excluding racial groups from military service. Distinguishing individuals by sexual preference is not akin to racism. Racism presupposes that special rights belong to people whose skin has a particular color. In the racist view, white people, for example, have rights which black people do not have.

The right to privacy is possessed by everyone, and no one has a greater claim to it than anyone else. Discrimination against homosexuals, if it extends no further than the restriction on access to the private areas of the sort that allow access to women and not men, would be a just discrimination. For it would be based not primarily on denying a certain right but rather on affirming another one. Still, a racist might argue that a right to privacy means that a white neighborhood can exclude blacks. But the presence of blacks in a white neighborhood does not restrict the freedom of whites.

No loss of a right (most especially no loss of privacy) occurs when blacks are included in white neighborhoods; a loss of a right does occur when blacks are excluded. When denied access to certain private areas, homosexuals most certainly lose something. But the compensation is the protection of a right held by others (who are most probably in the majority, if that makes any difference).

Many argue that we just ought to overcome a prejudice. We need to overcome many prejudices. Many others argue that we just ought to continue (officially) excluding homosexuals from the armed services. The position between the two extremes may afford little satisfaction to either party on opposite sides of this issue. And the military may find any sort of compromise unworkable.