Pentagon Survey: What Would You Do if You Had to Shower With a Homosexual?

The Pentagon has drawn heavy criticism this past week after copies of a survey designed to gage opinion on the current state of the military with particular focus on the proposed repeal of the military's ban on openly gay service personnel, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), was sent out to troops and became public, whereby repeal advocates accused the Pentagon of deliberately framing several of the questions in an anti-gay way.

The survey of 400,000 troops, half of whom are reserve forces, comprises 32 pages of some 100 plus questions, most on general issues surrounding marital status, housing, career plans and whether the respondents socialize with fellow servicemembers. But a significant proportion of those questions also asks how servicemembers would feel interacting with openly gay and lesbian personnel, subordinates and superiors if the DADT repeal went ahead and, in turn, how it would impact their desire to stay in the military.

Below is a sample of the questions appertaining to the DADT repeal that are included in the survey (.pdf):

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed, how easy or difficult do you think it will be for leadership as they start implementing the policy to... Hold Service members to the high standards of military personal conduct regardless of their sexual orientation?

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you are working with a Service member in your immediate unit who has said he or she is gay or lesbian, how, if at all, would your job performance be affected?

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed, how, if at all, will it affect your willingness to recommend to a family member or close friend that he or she join the military?

Have you been assigned to share bath facilities with an open bay shower that is also used by a Service member you believed to be homosexual?

Also, there are sets of questions like the following (answers included for clarity):

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you are assigned to share a room, berth or field tent with someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian Service member, which are you most likely to do? Mark 1.

- Take no action

- Discuss how we expect each other to behave and conduct ourselves while sharing a room, berth or field tent

- Talk to a chaplain, mentor, or leader about how to handle the situation

- Talk to a leader to see if I have other options

- Something else

- Don't know

This line is repeated several times, for instance in the following question, one that has proved among the most controversial:

If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you are assigned to bathroom facilities with an open bay shower that someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian Service member also used, which are you most likely to do?

While not all the questions are as loaded as the ones above, the way in which the survey has been framed has prompted the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the leading advocate group for the repeal, to issue a strongly worded condemnation:

“While it remains safe for gay and lesbian troops to participate in this survey, it is simply impossible to imagine a survey with such derogatory and insulting wording, assumptions, and insinuations going out about any other minority group in the military,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “Unfortunately, this expensive survey stokes the fires of homophobia by its very design and will only make the Pentagon’s responsibility to subdue homophobia as part of this inevitable policy change even harder. The Defense Department just shot itself in the foot by releasing such a flawed survey to 400,000 servicemembers, and it did so at an outrageous cost to taxpayers."

From my perspective, the study is problematic on several levels.

Firstly, even though President Obama has continually stated that he willrepeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", the Pentagon seems to be operating under the impression that this is still open to debate given that many of the questions begin with an "if" scenario, as in "If DADT was repealed...".

Secondly, a number of the questions seem to imply or assume a certain level of predatory behavior on the part of lesbian and gay service personnel that will have to be curtailed. For instance the shower question quoted above and the deeply offensive idea that gay and lesbian service personnel would have to be talked to about proper conduct are both indicative of tired, anti-gay rhetoric that has no place in a survey seeking a true, neutral understanding of an issue.

In fact, many of the survey questions seem designed to provoke hostility from straight servicemembers, using smatterings of phrases like "shared morality" teamed with derisive language that is unnecessary and provocative. However, the Pentagon has firmly rejected accusations that the survey is biased, saying that negative reaction to the survey is just media spin.

Nevertheless, this survey definitely seems counterintuitive to the goal of pursuing optimal unit cohesion, something that is very worrying as, potentially, military leaders could hold up negative responses to the survey as a reason to delay the repeal of DADT, and with the ultimate decision resting in their hands (should the legislative portion of the repeal currently awaiting Senate approval go ahead), this is a troubling development for an already imperfect repeal effort.