Gay liaisons in the services have often been ignored so long as the soldier does not acknowledge homosexual desire. Loneliness, drunkenness, terror, and confusion have all been accepted as sufficient excuses for occasional sex between men. In his exhaustive study of gays and lesbians in World War II, Coming Out Under Fire, Allen Berube recounts the enormous amount of homosexual sex that took place on ships and in foxholes, almost all of it ignored by officers who saw it as occasional relief from the tension of combat. The secrecy of sex in a toilet stall, behind a gun turret, or in a foxhole may even strengthen official policy by intensifying a subjective identification with the mask of heterosexuality. For these reasons, sex acts are forgivable.
Lesbian soldiers pose a different problem for the fundamentally male military.
This total affront, though rarely acknowledged by men, is surely not supportive of male-directed discipline, authority, and morale. Q.E.D., kick out the dykes and any other women disinclined to listen to male entreaties. No one in the top echelons of Defense any longer considers homosexual men and women less loyal or reliable than their straight mates. Far more worrisome to General Powell are those putatively heterosexual people whose sense of place, role, and identity relies on the denial of forbidden desire. The American Century is over, and the sort of military it required isn't on any party's budget proposals.