From: buckmr@aix.rpi.edu (Ron Buckmire)
Subject: Metzenbaum introduces Senate bill to end military ban
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 23:13:37 GMT


    Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum, D.-Ohio, has offered
legislation to overturn the Pentagon's ban on homosexuals in the U.S. armed
forces.
   "I introduced this legislation because I think this military tradition is
unfair, wrong, discriminatory and a little bit un-American, " Metzenbaum said
Tuesday.
   "I think that all people in this country should be treated equally and not
discriminated against and I think that applies as well to the military," he
said.
   Metzenbaum said his bill was intended as a Senate counterpart to one which
Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D.-Col., introduced in the House earlier this year.
   Metzenbaum's measure, which is less than a page long, provides that: "No
member of the armed forces or person seeking to become a member of the armed
forces may be discriminated against by the armed forces on the basis of sexual
orientation."
   The measure provides that the armed services may still punish sexual
misconduct, however.
   "Nothing," it says, "may be construed as requiring the armed forces to modify
any rule or policy regarding sexual misconduct or otherwise to sanction or
condone sexual misconduct, but such rules and policies may not be applied in a
manner that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation."
   Metzenbaum said some 17,000 men and women have been kicked out of the U.S.
military over the last decade on grounds of homosexuality. He noted that opinion
polls conducted as recently as 1991 found that eight out of 10 Americans
believed homosexuals should not be denied an opportunity to serve in the armed
forces because of their sexual orientation.
   The senator noted an apparent parallel between current military regulations
baring homosexuals and earlier ones excluding blacks from shipboard duty.
   "The presence of (homosexuals)," says a current regulation,  "adversely
affects the ability ... to maintain discipline, good order (and) to facilitate
assignment and worldwide deployment of members who frequently must live and work
under close conditions affording minimal privacy."
   "The close and intimate conditions of life aboard ship," says a 1941 Navy
memorandum, "the necessity for the highest possible degree of unity and esprit
de corps, the requirement of morale, all demand that nothing be done which may
adversely affect the situation. Past experience has shown irrefutably that the
enlistment of Negroes (other than for mess attendants) leads to disruptive and
undermining conditions."
   Present at Metzenbaum's press conference was Navy Lt. Tracy Thorne, an
aviator who admitted his homosexual orientation on a national television
broadcast last May. A Navy board of inquiry at Oceana Naval Air Station, Va.,
last week recommended that Thorne be separated from the service on grounds of
homosexuality.
   At the inquiry, Thorne's lawyers, Patrick W. Lee and Luther Zeigler of the
Washington firm of Crowell & Moring, had sought to show that the military ban on
homosexuals was without rational foundation. But the court ruled that 79
witnesses and exibits they tried to submit were inadmissible and decided the
case instead on the more narrow grounds of Thorne's public admission of
homosexuality.
   The lawyers have said they will appeal the ruling through a Navy board of
review and the civilian courts, where they will argue that Throne was denied
equal protection of the laws guaranteed in the 14th amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. The equal protection provision has been widely used in the past to
protect the civil rights of blacks and other minorities.
   "My greatest fear was that I would not be heard," Thorne said Tuesday of the
Navy hearing, "Last week my greatest fear was realized. I was not heard."
   "The American people have heard me," he said, "this policy will come to an
end."

-- 
RON BUCKMIRE, 54 Colvin Circle, Troy, NY 12180-3735. ``D.C., April 25 1993''
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