On Nov. 30, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals overturned
the conviction of Army Spc. Kenneth Bullock, who engaged in
consensual sodomy with a woman in a military barracks. In its
decision, the appeals court cited Lawrence v. Texas, a
July 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a Texas anti-sodomy
law unconstitutional. Although the United States v.
Bullock decision is not related to the "don't ask, don't tell"
policy, which allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as
long as they don't disclose their sexuality, some believe that the
decision could lay the groundwork for the Pentagon abandoning the
policy.
How do Americans feel about gays in the military? After the
Clinton administration enacted "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993, an
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 40% of Americans
favored allowing openly gay men and lesbians to serve in the
military, while 52% opposed it. A Gallup Poll on the same subject
11 years later finds public opinion much changed. A Nov. 19-21
CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll* asked Americans the same
question the NBC/Wall Street Journal asked 1993: "Do you
favor or oppose allowing openly gay men and lesbian women to serve
in the military?" Sixty-three percent of Americans favor allowing
openly gay people to serve in the military, and about a third (32%)
oppose it.
Since 1994, polling organizations including Gallup have found
consistent majority support for allowing gays to serve in the
military. The level of support does vary though, likely because of
the way the question is phrased. The current results fall in the
middle range of support.
Liberals, Women Most Likely to Support Gays in
Military
There are some wide demographic variations in support for gays
in the military. For example, 83% of self-identified liberals and
72% of moderates favor allowing gays to serve in the military,
while less than half (46%) of self-identified conservatives agree.
Three-fourths (73%) of people who rarely attend church support gays
in the military, compared with about half (49%) of weekly
attendees.
Women are also somewhat more likely than men to favor allowing
openly gay people in the military; 69% of women favor it, compared
with 57% of men.
Bottom Line
There is some question as to whether the recent United
States v. Bullock decision will actually lead to the abolition
of "don't ask, don't tell" and allow openly gay men and women in
the military. Diane H. Mazur, a professor at the Levin College of
Law at the University of Florida, was quoted in a Dec. 13 New
York Times article as saying that the decision will lead to
the "eventual demise of 'don't ask don't tell.'" But Eugene R.
Fidell, who teaches military justice at Harvard Law School,
ventures only so far as to say, "The effect on 'don't ask, don't
tell' will be indirect."
Regardless of what current military law says, and despite more
minimal support for other gay rights issues such as gay marriage
(see "Gay Rights: U.S. More Conservative Than Britain, Canada" in
Related Items), a clear majority of Americans support the right of
openly gay people to serve in the military. It seems inevitable
that military law will yield to the public's will at some point in
the near future.
*Results are based on telephone interviews with
1,015 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 19-21,
2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one
can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling
error is ±3 percentage points.
