MILITARY MONDAY

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Goes Mainstream
Military Policy Rises to New level of national concern

By KERRY ELEVELD
Monday, September 25, 2006

Three openly gay young adults showed up at the Times Square Armed Services recruiting station last week to enlist in the military. As expected, they were turned away.

The effort was a part of the Right to Serve campaign to heighten awareness about the military’s "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

Since the drive began in August, 29 fit, competent young people have attempted to enlist in 13 cities, and all 29 have been rebuffed because of their sexual orientation.

But each new rejection is fueling an effort to end "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" that has taken mainstream America by storm and spurred media coverage.

For several years, polling has shown mounting public sentiment against the military’s policy. Multiple polls by the Boston Globe, Pew Research Center and Gallup have found that anywhere between 60 and 79 percent of Americans favor letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.

Even so, news coverage of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" has generally lagged in America’s mainstream news outlets.

"If you look at the the history of media coverage of the issue, there is kind of a steady trickle but it’s not a torrent," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

But last month, something seemed to shift.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), the national lobby group for gay military personnel, keeps monthly archives of articles in which it appears and posts them on the SLDN web site. Though it is not mentioned in every article about "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," SLDN is generally the go-to organization for journalists seeking comment on the policy.

In August, SLDN appeared in an unusually high 80 articles and broadcasts, while it was only mentioned in an average of 50 articles per month for the previous seven months of 2006.

But the question isn’t just what grabs headlines, the question is what grabs headlines in the mainstream press—what makes reporters, editors and producers believe the issue has reached the threshold of national concern for the average American?

Of the 80 reports mentioning SLDN last month, a telling 56 percent of them (or 45) appeared in the mainstream press. The average number of mainstream pieces was only 32 percent in the previous seven months.

Steve Ralls, director of communications for SLDN, said two factors converged in August to generate more press coverage.

First the visibility of the Right to Serve campaign helped reignite the national debate over "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." Second, the release of numbers showing a spike in discharges of gays in the military last year, from 668 in 2004 to 742 in 2005. Previously, the number of gay discharges had been falling every year since preparations began for invading Afghanistan in 2002.

"The American people were seeing a situation where gays and lesbians were being discharged at an increasing rate while trying to enlist, while wanting serve," Ralls said. "And on the opposite page of the newspaper, they were reading about the military’s struggle with finding qualified recruits, and the stories of recruits who have enlisted and were given special wavers and special exemptions in order to do so," he added.

The disconnect was summed up by a heterosexual National Guardsman in a New York Times article this month. "Would you rather have a felon than a gay soldier?" posited Capt. Scott Stanford, who returned from Iraq in June. "I wouldn’t."


Crux of the story

Of all the coverage heaped upon "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" of late, one story has risen above the rest. On July 27 of this year, SLDN sent out a press release that a "highly regarded" gay Arabic speaking linguist had been dismissed, bringing the total number of Arabic linguists dismissed under the ban to 55. That jump started mainstream coverage the rest of July and carried over into August.

Beyond receiving coverage in newspapers, the story began to be covered by national news broadcasts—the standard bearers of broad mass appeal. CNN and MSNBC aired pieces that same day, and ABC’s "Good Morning America" interviewed the subject in early August.

Though neither CNN nor MSNBC had a single story in SLDN’s archive before the linguist story broke in late July, both outlets went on to do followup coverage of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" after their initial reports.

"The Arabic linguist story is a flash point for many Americans," Ralls said. "I have been at SLDN for almost seven years now. No story that I have worked on has captured the fascination and interests of the public in the way that the Arabic linguist story has."

The very first mention of gay linguists being dismissed came in November of 2002 when the military discharged nine gay Arabic speakers. The press effect was similar then with 45 of 50 articles mentioning SLDN running in mainstream outlets. CNN did four separate segments.

Aaron Belkin said the 2002 story caused a change in tone in the way "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" was covered by the press. "The breaking of the linguists story kind of crystalized or catalyzed something of a momentum shift," he said.

As Ralls put it, "The Arabic linguist story provided an opportunity to encourage the public to think about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in a way that they hadn’t before, and it was an opportunity to show the really day-to-day incremental impact of the law on the military’s ability to do its job."

To date, more than 11,000 servicemembers have been discharged for being gay since the policy took effect in 1993. The Government Accountability Office reported that 322 of them were language specialists who had "skills in a foreign language that DoD had considered to be especially important."

Ralls said he believes Americans are generally paying more attention to what’s happening in the military than they were in 2002.

"As the situation in Iraq becomes more and more dire, the public’s concern about having qualified people on the ground who know what they’re doing becomes more pronounced," he said. "It’s not only the quantity of the troops being dismissed but also the quality of the troops being dismissed."

A bill to repeal the military’s policy, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, now has the support of 121 members of Congress. But it will not be voted on anytime soon as long as Republicans control the House of Representatives.

Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank said that if Democrats take control of the House this November, a hearing would finally be held on how "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is affecting military preparedness.