Military Commanders Appear To Tolerate Anti-Gay Harassment

SANTA BARBARA, CA -- A report published this month in the journal, Military Psychology, suggests that a disproportionate number of military commanders perpetrate or witness anti-gay harassment in the U.S. military when compared to a civilian population. It also found that reported incidents of some forms of perceived sexual-orientation-based harassment were lower in the military than in the general population.

The study was conducted and written by Professor Bonnie Moradi of the Psychology Department at University of Florida, and was commissioned by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSMM), a think tank at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The study was designed to compare data obtained in a year 2000 Defense Department survey of anti-gay harassment to parallel incidents in the civilian population. The military poll had surveyed over 71,000 active duty service members from 38 randomly selected installations and found that 80% had heard offensive speech, including derogatory names and jokes, targeted at gays during the previous year, and 5% had witnessed a violent, anti-gay assault.

Researchers involved in the current study sought to assess whether the high incidence of anti-gay harassment reflected similar patterns in the general population or might instead be attributable to norms or policies that were specific to military culture. Dr. Moradi modeled a poll after the military survey. She conducted it using a civilian sample of 196 young adults, all drawn from a college in the American south, whose demographic profile roughly matched the military sample. The answers of these 196 respondents were then compared to those of 200 randomly selected participants in the Defense Department survey.

The study found that, compared to civilian respondents, a greater proportion of military respondents who reported a harassment incident indicated that a senior person perpetrated the harassment. Among the civilians who reported witnessing a harassment incident, 7% indicated that a person of authority committed such abuse, while among military respondents who reported witnessing an incident, 15% of respondents claimed a supervisor or commander had done so. Nine percent of civilians who witnessed anti-gay harassment reported that a person of authority had also witnessed the incident, while 25%, or nearly three times the proportion, of military witnesses indicated the same.

Dr. Moradi found that the pattern was reversed when it came to the general incidence of some forms of reported anti-gay harassment. Although participants in the civilian and military surveys reported witnessing about the same amount of violent anti-gay assaults, military respondents reported lower levels of offensive speech and gestures aimed at those perceived to be gay or lesbian than civilian participants.

One possible reason for the discrepancy between the responses of military and civilian participants is the prospect of underreporting of sexual-orientation-based harassment by military respondents. Since the survey relied on self-reporting and thus on the recognition by service members that an incident is, in fact, "harassment," ambiguity about the targets of abuse can result in underreporting. Gays and lesbians are prohibited by law from revealing their sexual orientation; thus offensive speech, gestures or actions aimed against them could go unrecognized by their peers as sexual-orientation-based. Additionally, to the extent that anti-gay harassment is normalized in military culture, anti-gay epithets or abuse may be considered a routine part of socialization rather than as harassment.

Dr. Aaron Belkin, Director of CSSMM, said the new study confirmed the results of prior research which found a link between the legal codification of anti-gay sentiment and a permissive attitude among the leadership toward harassment. "Until official policy stops targeting gays," he said, "it will be difficult for commanders to crack down on anti-gay harassment. The institution simply cannot make a serious dent in the rate of abuse as long is it continues to fire people simply for saying they are gay."

Experts confirm that gays and lesbians in the military continue to face serious mistreatment. "Anti-gay harassment remains a daily reality for our men and women in uniform," said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a legal aid and advocacy group that assists those affected by the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Since 1993, SLDN has answered more than 7,300 calls for help, Osburn said, a majority of which involved service members who experienced anti-gay harassment. He attributed the problem to a lack of will among senior military brass. "Pentagon leaders have failed to implement their Anti-Harassment Action Plan and have openly acknowledged that they have no plans to more aggressively enforce measures to protect service members from anti-gay harassment," he said. Only when commanders show strong leadership by according gays and lesbians dignity and respect, he explained, is anti-gay harassment in the armed forces likely to subside.