Quick Fact: Perkins advances myth that DADT repeal could hurt morale, unit cohesion, readiness

From the February 28 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Sunday:

PERKINS: Well, as a veteran of the Marine Corps, I've served in the military and I understand exactly the environment in which men and women serve, and it's much different than what civilians live in. And it's troubling on a couple of points: one is the -- how this will affect the men and women who serve.

You've got 80 to 100 men that will live in one room, shower together, they stay together. I mean, it's -- you don't have much privacy. But, secondly, and I think more importantly is the impact that this will have on national security from the standpoint of its impact upon military readiness. And now we've had 14 congressional studies in the last 16 years or congressional hearings and they've all come to the same conclusion that good order, morale, unit cohesion is essential to military success, and this policy, the current policy -- "don't ask, don't tell" -- upholds that. So, this is not just our opinion. Congress has come to the same conclusion 14 times in the last 16 years.

FACT: Experts say claims that "don't ask, don't tell" preserves "unit cohesion" are not supported by studies or experience

Unit cohesion argument "not supported by any scientific studies." In an essay published in the fourth quarter 2009 issue of Joint Force Quarterly -- which is "published for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University" -- Col. Om Prakash wrote of DADT, "[T]he stated premise of the law -- to protect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness -- is not supported by any scientific studies." The essay won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition.

At least 25 nations -- including many U.S. allies -- allow military service by openly gay men and lesbians. According to the Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California-Santa Barbara that studies sexuality and the military, as of February 2010, 25 nations allowed military service by openly gay men and lesbians, including U.S. allies Australia and Israel and the following NATO member countries: Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

GAO: Other countries say allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly "has not created problems in the military." In a June 1993 report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied four countries that allow gay men and lesbians to serve in the military -- Canada, Israel, Germany, and Sweden -- and found that military officials said "the presence of homosexuals has not created problems in the military because homosexuality is not an issue in the military or in society at large." It also found that "[m]ilitary officials from each country said that, on the basis of their experience, the inclusion of homosexuals in their militaries has not adversely affected unit readiness, effectiveness, cohesion, or morale." GAO wrote that it chose those four countries to study because they "generally reflect Western cultural values yet still provide a range of ethnic diversity" and have similarly sized militaries.

Palm Center: "No consulted expert anywhere in the world concluded that lifting the ban on openly gay service caused an overall decline in the military." In a February 2010 report, the Palm Center reviewed the experience of the 25 nations whose militaries allow gay men and lesbians to serve and found: "Research has uniformly shown that transitions to policies of equal treatment without regard to sexual orientation have been highly successful and have had no negative impact on morale, recruitment, retention, readiness or overall combat effectiveness. No consulted expert anywhere in the world concluded that lifting the ban on openly gay service caused an overall decline in the military."

None of the 104 experts interviewed for study believed decisions to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in UK, Canada, Israel, or Australia undermined cohesion. In a 2003 article for Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Aaron Belkin wrote that the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (since renamed the Palm Center) had conducted a study of the impact of the decisions to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military in the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada, and Australia, and found: "Not a single one of the 104 experts interviewed believed that the Australian, Canadian, Israeli, or British decisions to lift their gay bans undermined military performance, readiness, or cohesion."

Participants in creation of DADT admit "unit cohesion" argument was "based on nothing." In a March 2009 Huffington Post piece, the Palm Center's Nathaniel Frank wrote of the process that led to the creation of DADT in the early 1990s:

One group staffer provided a wealth of research to the flag officers in charge, but said it was never even considered. He said the policy was created "behind closed doors" by people who were totally closed to lifting the ban, and that it relied on anti-gay stereotypes and resistance to outside forces.

Charles Moskos, the renowned military sociologist and close friend of Sen. Sam Nunn, advised the MWG [Military Working Group], and was ultimately credited as the academic architect of "don't ask, don't tell." While he said publicly that the problem with openly gay service was that it would threaten "unit cohesion," he told me privately something quite different: "Fuck unit cohesion," he said, "I don't care about that." For Moskos, the last serious defender of "don't ask, don't tell," the ban was about the "moral right" of straight people not to be forced into intimate quarters with gays. Shortly before he died last summer, he admitted that he clung to his policy, in part, because he was afraid of disappointing his friends if he "turncoated."

[...]

The MWG was also supposed to take recommendations from working groups convened by the individual services. Rear Admiral John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy was a participant in the talks about whether to lift the ban in 1993. Hutson told me the assessment of gay service was "based on nothing. It wasn't empirical, it wasn't studied, it was completely visceral, intuitive." The policy, he said, was rooted in "our own prejudices and our own fears." Hutson now says "don't ask, don't tell" was a "moral passing of the buck."

Another advisor to the MWG was Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a deeply homophobic evangelical who became vice president of the Family Research Council. While Maginnis admitted that he found homosexuality "morally repugnant," he cast the question of gay service in terms of "unit cohesion" for what he called "political reasons"--because he knew this approach would be more effective than moral tirades against equal treatment for gays. Maginnis, who believes gays are "unstable" hedonists who can't control themselves and are tainted by something called "gay bowel syndrome," was only the tip of the iceberg: in fact the "unit cohesion" rationale was an elaborate strategy created by a network of evangelical military officers and supporters who knowingly sold an anti-gay policy rooted in religion as though it were essential to protecting national security. And for too long, the nation drank the coolaid.