Aug 01, 2008  |  By: CHRIS JOHNSON  | COMMENTS     

Activists who participated in the 1993 congressional hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and saw last week’s testimony on the policy, say they noticed stark differences in rhetoric and tone between the two hearings.

Witnesses on both sides of the controversial issue, testified July 23 before the personnel subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

Opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” said the gay former service members who testified before Congress — Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Eric Alva and Navy Capt. Joan Darrah — were excellent spokespersons for the cause of repealing the policy. Lawmakers commended the two former service members during the hearing for their role in the armed forces.

But those defending the law, particularly Elaine Donnelly, were ridiculed for holding extreme and anti-gay views.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor for the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would allow gays to serve openly, said Donnelly was using the term “eligibility” to discriminate against gays wanting to serve.
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a former Army officer, described Donnelly’s testimony as an “insult” because she was suggesting that service members were not professional enough to handle gay troops in their units.

Criticism of Donnelly was not limited to lawmakers. Dana Milbank’s July 24 column in the Washington Post was particularly harsh. Milbank said Donnelly’s testimony “achieved the opposite of her intended effect” and “had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy” for repealing the law barring open service.

Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), told the Blade that Donnelly’s testimony during the hearing was so outlandish that he was pleased the committee called her as a witness. Donnelly not only supports current law, but also argues that recruiters should ask enlistees about their sexual orientation before they enter the military to prevent gays from donning uniforms.

“I think that when Elaine Donnelly speaks … her comments defy any rational basis for retaining ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” Sarvis said.

Donnelly, smarting from the treatment she received from lawmakers, told the Blade the way the subcommittee conducted the hearing was “unfortunate” because lawmakers were more interested in deriding her than listening to her views.

“We were there to raise new issues, new questions, but it was very clear the committee was not interested in hearing what we were there to say,” she said. “The bullying that went on … it was just inappropriate. It was not a proud day in the history of that armed services committee.”

But the situation was the reverse in 1993, with supporters of gays serving openly in the military being ridiculed and proponents of a ban seeming more mainstream.

During the 1993 hearings, gay activists accused Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat who was then chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, of orchestrating the hearings to make a ban on open service seem like a necessity.

The 1993 hearings in the House Armed Services Committee, then chaired by Ronald Dellums of California, a Democrat who was in favor of gays serving openly, were seen as more balanced but still somewhat hostile toward gays.
House and Senate lawmakers held about 14 hearings on the issue and heard testimony from more than 50 witnesses. Few witnesses were advocates of open service.

Nunn had a number of “field hearings” at a naval base in Norfolk, Va. In one such 1993 hearing, the former senator toured the sleeping quarters of a submarine, pointing out that gay and straight service members would be in close contact in small spaces where bunk beds were crammed together.

At another field hearing, Nunn was criticized for allowing more than 1,000 sailors to jeer as Lt. Tracy Thorne, an openly gay Navy pilot, testified in favor of allowing gays in the military.

Army Lt. Gen. Calvin A. H. Waller, the second-in-command during the first Persian Gulf War and a military witness, at one point embarrassed lawmakers in 1993 by hypothetically talking about them as gay.

William Cohen, then a senator from Maine, asked Waller what he would do with a soldier who said he was gay but had not engaged in sexual activity.

Waller suggested he refer to this hypothetical soldier as “Cohen,” producing a big laugh in the chambers and a red face on the senator. So Waller suggested “Nunn,” referring to committee chair, and produced another laugh. Finally, he landed upon another way to refer to the soldier: “buttpucker.”

Waller said he would initiate discharge proceedings against “buttpucker.”

Lawrence Korb, now a research fellow at the Center for American Progress and once assistant secretary of defense for manpower for President Reagan, testified at a 1993 Senate hearing in favor of allowing gays to serve openly and recalled the antagonistic atmosphere during the hearing.

“What happened back in 1993 when I testified, I was one of the few people supporting the change,” he said. “The hearing was very contentious and downright hostile.”

Faced with serious questions about “sexual tension,” “conceptually erotic relationships” between service members and the “profound intimacy” of military settings, ...