Just in Time for DADT Debate: Charges of Gay Military ’Rapes’
0As the debate heats up over repealing the anti-gay ban that keeps openly gay and lesbian troops out of America's military, at least one anti-gay group claims that ending the ban that keeps gays in uniform quiet will lead to a spike in assaults that will go unpunished due to political correctness, leading to a decimated fighting force.
A May 25 Talking Points Memo story says that anti-gay organization the Family Research Council claims to have conducted research into the question of the rate of sexual assault in the military, drawing a conclusion that gays are three times more likely that straights to sexually assault their comrades in arms.
The conclusion is drawn from an analysis of reports of sexual assault in which servicemembers--often drunk--are allegedly fondled or otherwise victimized. In some cases, consensual sexual acts are reported: in one case, two men who had had sex on more than one occasion got into a physical altercation after one of the men told others about it.
The Family Research Council has been in the news lately following the revelation that its co-founder, George Rekers, hired a male escort through a website called RentBoy.com to accompany him on a European vacation. Rekers told the media that the escort was hired as a luggage porter, but the escort described sexual massages he said he administered to Rekers on a daily basis during the trip.
TMP reported that Peter Sprigg, the Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the FRC, claimed in a conference call that--as the TMP article put it--the repeal of the anti-gay law "will turn the U.S. military into a terrifying free-rape zone where no heterosexual is safe."
"We are today releasing an analysis of publicly available documents which show that homosexuals in the military are three times more likely to commit sexual assaults than heterosexuals are relative to their numbers," Sprigg told conference call participants. "We believe this problem would only increase if the current law against homosexuality...were to be repealed."
The article also included the text of Sprigg's report, titled Homosexual Assault in the Military.
"Members of the military are regularly placed in positions of forced intimacy with their fellow servicemembers," Sprigg's document read. "The military continues to provide separate bathroom, shower, and sleeping facilities for men and women in order to protect their privacy during these intimate activities," the report continues. "However, allowing homosexuals to openly serve in the military would likely result, for the first time, in heterosexuals being forced to cohabit with those who may view them as a potential sex object."
Self-Contradictory Report
The ensuing body of text contradicts that statement, appearing to document how, with the anti-gay ban in place, heterosexuals are already forced into intimate circumstances with those whose perpetration of sexual assault indicates some level of sexual interest in the victims. However, the report fails to separate out--or make any distinction between--cases in which assailants are predatory homosexuals victimizing straights; cases in which the sexual aggressor and the victim are both straight or both gay; or cases in which a gay soldier (or one presumed to be gay) is subjected to sexual assault by a straight sexual attacker as "punishment" for his presumed orientation. The report appears simply to assume all sexual aggressors are gay and all victims are heterosexual, except in the case of consensual gay sex that the report references.
Rather than subjecting the data to detailed analysis, the report relies on broad assumptions and characterizations, assuming that rates of sexual assault involving perpetrators and victims of the same gender should be consistent with rates of homosexuality in the general population. The report says that the rates of same-sex assault in the military are higher than the rates of gays in the general population, and makes the assertion, based on the raw numbers, that homosexuals are three times more likely than straights to commit sexual assault.
The report readily falls back on stereotypes and anti-gay myths. "This could reflect the well-documented fact that homosexual men have far more sexual partners in general than do heterosexuals," the report claims, with reference to the putative three-times-higher rate of what it presumes to be assaults by gays on straights.
"Or it could reflect the general higher rates of psychological disorders that have been identified in homosexuals," the report adds, before going on to note that in the gender-segregated living conditions of the military, "homosexuals simply have greater opportunity to sexually exploit others than heterosexuals do"--unless, of course, heterosexuals are exploiting one another, as is the case when groups of men are forced into shared living conditions over long periods of time, such as in prison or, historically, ships at sea.
The report went on to conflate the presence of gays with same-sex activity, asserting that, "the data clearly indicated that homosexual conduct poses a uniquely elevated risk to good order, morale, and discipline in the military"--a claim that, even if true, is a separate issue from gays and lesbians being allowed to serve openly. Military law forbids sexual assault regardless of the genders or sexual orientations of those involved.
Addressing the fact that highly skilled gay troops who have not been accused of sexual assault or impropriety have been discharged due to their orientation, the report poses the question, "Do we really need more homosexual linguists?"
A retired officer opposed to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell posited that straight men would become the new women of the military if gays were allowed to serve openly. "We faced this when we started tightening up on rape," recounted retired Col. Dick Black. "Women were intimidated about coming forward--they'd be called sluts or you know they hung out in bars or whatever." Black added that, "when it comes to homosexual assaults.... You've got typically a one-on-one situation and there would be tremendous political pressure placed on the victims to remain silent. It will be very similar to the situation we had with women 50 years ago when they were reluctant to come forward and report rape because they would be mislabeled."
The reasoning of the report and of anti-repeal officers seems to suggest that gays who insist on telling the truth about themselves should be kept out of the military because of unlawful actions that might, or might not, be taken by gays against straights... or straights against straights, for that matter, or even straights against gays.
Past cases in which same-sex sexual assaults have taken place in the military have demonstrated that such assaults are handled in the same manner as heterosexual assaults. In one instance of an assault that took place in 2006 between two men in the British army, a victim who had been intoxicated at the time of an assault he suffered at the hands of a fellow servicemember told the military court that the assailant had pulled his trousers down in a barracks restroom, but he had been too drunk to fend off the attack. The BBC News reported in a July 9, 2009, article that the assailant, having been found guilty, faced discharge and was placed on a sex offenders' registry.
A Feb. 28, 2007 Associated Press article reported that an Air Force captain had been convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault in the rapes of four men and attempted rapes of two others. all but one of the victims were in the military. The captain was sentenced to 50 years.