Under the US military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell (DADT) law,Footnote 1 gays and lesbians are allowed to serve on the condition that their sexual orientation remains private; in other words, when it comes to a person's homosexuality, the military won't ask, the service member shouldn't tell, and no one is ever supposed to find out. DADT mandates this exclusion of apparent homosexuality on the basis of protecting military functionality. This mandate of privacy (which really is a mandate of secrecy, as the issue is not so much about homosexuality as about the management of information around homosexuality) is justified as a matter of public concern and can be thought of as a furtherance of the military as a total institution (Goffman 1961); however, the effect of the law works in opposition to its intent. Rather than enhancing military performance and protecting the military's strong levels of camaraderie and cohesion, the mandated silence of gay and lesbian identity under DADT instead weakens these very connections. Drawing on interviews with gay and lesbian military veterans, I will show the double binds that this privacy-secrecy mandate creates for gay and lesbian personnel and the ways in which it actually harms military cohesion. Further, I argue that while DADT expects gay people to stay silent about their sexuality, it also disrupts the total institutional aspect of the military by creating what I will call a “queer space” in which allegedly hidden gay identities are created and expressed, and this mandated silence is rarely kept. This queer space is a disruption to the supposed uniform identity production at the heart of the military as total institution process and is instead a space in which a supposedly not allowed gay military identity can be articulated. At its core, this is a story of the ways in which DADT is played out through social interaction.

I will begin with a review of my methodology and a very brief overview of the content (and context) of the DADT law. I will then explore the interrelated themes of privacy-secrecy and camaraderie and the contradictory and paradoxical ways in which DADT impacts these insubstantial yet important qualities. This will be followed by a discussion of gay identity production in the queer space of the DADT military and how we see such production played out in the context of interactions with other gay and lesbian service members. I will conclude with some policy implications and recommendations for the future of DADT.

Methods: Asking and Telling with Gay and Lesbian Veterans

Until recently, very little work existed addressing the contemporary experiences of gays and lesbians in the US military. The majority of research in this area comes from before the enactment of DADT (cf. Bérubé 1990; Harry 1984; Jackson 1993; Shilts 1993; Webber 1993; Williams and Weinberg 1970; Zeeland 1993) or from non-US militaries with no ban on gays and lesbians (cf. Kaplan and Ben-Ari 2000; Mazur 2002). However, recently, a spate of post-DADT memoirs and autobiographies of gay military service have been published (Lehmkuhl 2006; McGowan 2005; Merritt 2005) and, academically, historian Nathaniel Frank's (2004, 2009) work has drawn directly on the experiences of gay and lesbian US military personnel, many who have served or are serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His work highlights the considerable problems of DADT, including the negative outcomes on gays and lesbians serving as well as the negative impacts on straight personnel and the military as a whole. In this vein, I explore the social effects of DADT as seen through the lived experiences of gay and lesbian military personnel. This is not about the impact of DADT on individuals but instead the ways in which DADT is played out through social interaction. In looking at the experiences of gay and lesbian military personnel, I seek to understand how those experiences are shaped by the context of DADT.

Between the summer of 2006 and early 2007, I conducted interviews with 24 gay former military personnel, 18 male and six female. All of them had some period of service during the time of DADT (from 1993 onward; see below), though two people I talked with (Allen and Danny) left during 1993 as DADT was about to be implemented, but before it actually took effect. Also, though some interview subjects gave me permission to use full (real) names (and one even preferred it), all names used herein (including the ones just mentioned) are pseudonyms. Focusing on former rather than current personnel gave me valuable material by asking about their departure from the military and whether or not they would return if the ban were lifted. Interviews consisted of open-ended questions under several broad categories including personal background and information, reasons for joining the military, experiences in the military (including questions on pressures to “act straight,” experiences of homophobia or other gay-related prejudice, and the sorts of relationships and interactions they had with other military members), reasons for and experiences of coming out to others (for those who did), and the circumstances under which they left the military.

Because my contacts were scattered throughout the country, I conducted most interviews by phone. The one contact I made in proximity to me was interviewed in person. Most interviews took about an hour to complete (one was as short as 40 min, and a couple were as long as an hour and a half). All interviews were tape recorded and transcribed for evaluation. Analysis was performed by manually coding interview transcripts along several lines, including things like experiences (or lack) of privacy, relationships and interactions with others (both gay and straight), common fears, and circumstances of departure. These coding lines were initially guided by the interview questions but also evolved throughout the analysis period as new themes and elements presented themselves in the data.

My subjects include both officers and enlisted personnelFootnote 2 from all five military branches (though most are from the army). Times of service ranged from 9 months to 25 years, though most served between 3 and 8 years and were in their late teens when they joined the military. At the time of the interview, my subjects ranged in age from 20 to 61, most in their late twenties to early thirties.

I met interview subjects through a variety of sources. Some were speakers I met via a college speaking engagement in early 2006. Others came through a variety of organizations for gay and lesbian veterans. A few were personal contacts through friends and family. Though a pure respondent-driven sampling method (Heckathorn 1997) would have been ideal, the nature of my population is such that there is no way to generate a random sample starting point; DADT makes finding gay and lesbian service members, veteran or otherwise, extremely difficult. Instead, I followed the “snowball” approach principle of this method as best I could by asking initial respondents to refer me to others. The links between my respondents are shown in the “Appendix.”

I wanted all of my subjects to have served at least part of their time during the period of DADT (or from 1993 onward); 19 of my subjects served all or part of their time after the year 2000; only three left the military before that year and two in mid-2000. Nonetheless, regardless of when they left, half of those interviewed had significant periods of service before 2000. Because of this initial focus on the DADT-period, I turned down two interview candidates because they left in the mid-1980s. In retrospect, this time distinction may not have been as important as I first thought: 11 of my final interviewees served before the implementation of DADT (some entering the military as early as the 1970s), allowing me to see that though DADT does mitigate gay identity in a military context (which I will discuss in detail below), the difficulties and constraints placed on gay and lesbian personnel did not change appreciably from an outright ban to the supposed “compromise” of DADT. It is to this compromise, and what brought it about, that I will next turn.

Total Institutions, the Military, and DADT

The US military (indeed, any military) manifests many of the characteristics of what Goffman (1961) calls a total institution. Several important features characterize total institutions: all aspects of life are conducted in the same space under some authority; members are in the immediate company of others, all of whom are treated alike and doing generally the same kind of thing; the day's activities tend to be highly scheduled, and all activities are designed to fill some sort of official plan. Essentially, they are institutions of (as well as for) social control, requiring that the behavior of those within its realm remain within the boundaries of certain rules and expectations (Armaline 2005; Kivett & Warren 2002). The military readily fits this description. It is a career for many in its service, and in many cases combines living space with work space. For those living on a base or serving internationally, most (if not all) aspects of daily life occur in the same place surrounded by other military members who may be doing different jobs but are working toward a common purpose. There is a clear and regular authority system within the military and, often, duties and activities are heavily scheduled (and perhaps regulated in some cases). All of this contributes to a distinct military culture. Total institutions are maintained in several ways, but for this discussion, the most important are the mortification of the self and group or collective identity; each will be discussed in detail as they relate to particular aspects of DADT.

DADT Comes Out: Highlights of the DADT Law

While a thorough analysis of the history and implementation of DADT is beyond the scope of this paper, a few brief notes about its passage into law and its major tenets are in order.Footnote 3 Passed as law in late 1993, DADT states that known homosexuals are to be removed and prohibited from military service, though, strikingly, the law states that the service member in question will not be removed if it is deemed to not be in the military's best interest or if the person claims to be homosexual in order to get out of military service. In fact, in times of national emergency, enforcement of homosexual exclusion is minimal, and some openly gay soldiers may be exempted from DADT (Britton and Williams 1995; Letellier 2005). Some of my interview subjects told me stories that illustrate this very issue.

None of this, however, was a change from prior policy. The change that DADT brought about was a form of compromise between President Clinton and Congress stating that while homosexuals are prohibited, direct questions to a serviceperson concerning homosexuality are also prohibited. The exact wording of the law specifies that this suspension of questioning applies to “the processing of individuals for accession into the Armed Forces” and other administrative purposes. This is also typically interpreted to mean that no one in the military is allowed to ask about a person's homosexuality. Essentially, gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military so long as their homosexuality remains hidden; otherwise, DADT is simply a rewording (and codification into law) of existing military policy since World War II which completely prohibited homosexuals from military service on the grounds that they were incompatible with the mission and life of the armed forces (Bérubé 1990). More than the pre-DADT standard of homosexual activity, the self-identification as gay or lesbian is now the ultimate trump card, since identity itself (even if one is celibate or engages in heterosexual activity) is read as intent to engage in homosexual activity. This conflation of behavior and identity is not uncommon. For example, Justice O'Conner's concurring opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) consistently refers to homosexual identity as the basis of her decision, not the homosexual act that was the basis of the case. Of course, she's not alone; public celebration (and dismay) at the decision also tended to equate the court's ruling of the illegality of prohibiting homosexual activity with validation of gay identity. For an excellent analysis of this in relation to DADT, see Halley (1999). It should also be noted that even with this change of focus, engaging in homosexual activity is still grounds for military disqualification under DADT.

The Privacy Double Standard

Though critics of DADT have offered a variety of explanations for the policy's existence (Belkin and Bateman 2003; Frank 2009; Halley 1999; Meyers 1994), policy makers give us two sets of very clear reasons for the law. The first of these reasons centers on privacy:

It [is] necessary for members of the armed forces involuntarily to accept living conditions and working conditions that are…characterized by forced intimacy with little or no privacy (10 U.S.C. § 654 (1993)).

This lack of physical privacy is an example of the mortification of the self, which has been noted as a primary means by which a total institution (such as the military) maintains itself (Goffman 1961); this lack of privacy is a hallmark component of how a total institution remakes the self.Footnote 4 Military personnel are allowed minimal privacy in their lives. Most commonly, this means a lack of physical privacy, such as group shower situations, open toilets, and multi-person sleeping arrangements; it may also mean room searches, which are common in the military and not only a limitation of personal barriers but also a routine violation of them.

Discussions and comments from senatorial hearings at the time of the DADT compromise were framed largely around the assumption that people don't want to share such intimate spaces with someone who could potentially be attracted to them. These statements often included direct references to the discomfort service members would face at having to share close environments (especially showers) with known gays and lesbians. Arguably, the general public also held these views, at least at the time of the law's inception. During the 1993 debate over Clinton's proposal to lift the then-current ban, many newspaper articles and TV shows addressed the privacy issue in terms of the shower (Belkin and Bateman 2003). This discomfort was often characterized as an invasion of privacy. The implicit fear was of having to face unwanted sexual advances; this is the reason that men and women tend to be given separate facilities in the military (cf. Shawver 1995; though in some combat situations, even this is not always the case). Extrapolating on this ideological premise for DADT, sociologist Charlie Moskos said, “If feelings of privacy for women are respected regarding privacy from men, then we must respect those of straights with regard to gays” (Shawver 1995, p. 158). Again, the advocates of the policy argued for the need to manage identity privacy, but this time in order to protect physical privacy of the (again, assumed straight) military personnel. To follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, if we aren't going to actually keep gays and lesbians out of the military (as had been policy up to that point), we should at least protect straight personnel from fears of unwanted sexual encounters by not allowing gay and lesbian personnel to self-disclose their homosexuality (and therefore self-identify as a potential threat). This push for identity secrecy is justified by the accepted and acknowledged lack of physical privacy accorded to military members generally. Essentially, if the military is to be able to maintain this physical openness, it must find a way to conceal homosexuality within its ranks.

Lack of privacy can also mean “a violation of one's informational preserve” (Goffman 1961, p. 23), or a lack of the ability to control who knows what about you. This could include things as mundane as phone calls and personal mail (which can be tapped or opened in the military, depending on the circumstances, as well as simply being accidentally overheard or found) or even invasive questions asked of new recruits. It could also include things spoken in confidence to a chaplain or counselor.

It seems clear, then, that privacy (both physical and informational) is very limited in the military, a fact confirmed by my own interview subjects and even the DADT law itself. Over and over again, my subjects told or indicated to me that “there is no privacy in the military; it's the nature of it” (Ben), especially in combat situations, or as Nick puts it, “the only privacy you get in the military is the privacy that is afforded to you by other service members, and that's basically a form of respect.” When asked whether privacy was an issue for him while he served, Malcolm responded, “I didn't know there was privacy in the army. There is no privacy, there is no ‘this is my space’.…You're a family.…the army doesn't allow you to have a private life.”

Nevertheless, in order for the military to maintain this lack of privacy, DADT requires another kind of privacy from its gay and lesbian personnel. This is the contradiction of privacy that DADT generates: privacy (both in regard to physical space and personal information) is limited (or nonexistent) in the military, yet DADT expects gay and lesbian personnel to maintain secrecy (or informational privacy) about their sexual identity. Adding to this double bind (Sedgwick 1990), gay and lesbian personnel—expected by law to maintain identity secrecy—at the same time experience a lack of the identity secrecy they are supposed to maintain. According to the law, for example, chaplains and counselors (although typically bound to confidentiality both in and out of the military), can (and technically, must) pass on information regarding a service member's homosexuality to a service member's command. Homosexuality is not included in the military confidentiality agreement.

Kathy highlights the tension between the lack of privacy (particularly around gay and lesbian issues) and the necessity for individual maintenance of identity secrecy. As an NCO, she was always told to

take care of the troops' families. They are the backbone of the troops…[maybe someone has] a family problem, maybe he's got a problem with his wife or his kids, you know? Make that your problem.…But not me, you know? It was like, you take care of your crap by yourself.…And I thought, that's really a disparity there. And that made me feel truly like a second class citizen, because, you know, I had to shut this all up and if I'd even gone to a psychologist or a counselor, they would have turned me in. So, I mean, nothing's private. You can tell your counselor, hey, I shot somebody yesterday, and that's privacy. They won't even tell on you. But if you tell them, I'm a homosexual, they turn you in. So that's where I just got really tired of the whole double standard.

As Kathy's story shows, privacy is a very relative (and slippery) entity. DADT requires gays and lesbians to maintain silence, keeping their sexuality private, but even then, “nothing's private.” Because DADT overrides the protection of clerical or psychiatric confidentiality, sometimes outing oneself to close friends is safer for military personnel than telling a priest or therapist. The management of information around one's gay identity is particularly paramount.

The Importance of Cohesion and Camaraderie

The second primary reason for the DADT law centers around furthering the strong cohesion within the military, considered the basis of effective military functioning:

The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability (10 U.S.C. § 654 (1993)).

A total institution seeks to reinforce group identity. Through a variety of rituals, prohibitions, and rules, a total institution such as the military breaks down a person's individual identity and works to instill an identity with the group at large. This can be seen in the military in the high levels of group (or unit) cohesion. In requiring silence around one's homosexuality, the law requires gays and lesbians to stay closeted in order to allow them to serve, and thereby avoid any alleged risk to unit cohesion (as well as morale and good order and discipline). In fact, this cohesion (group identity) is the primary effect of the various modes of mortifying the self; mortification of the self and group identity (or in this case, lack of privacy and strong camaraderie) are interrelated aspects of the total institution. The strong camaraderie experienced by many military personnel promotes and is promoted by this group cohesion and is encouraged by the military as an organization. Based upon the assumption that most personnel (assumed straight) wouldn't want to serve with openly gay personnel and this would therefore disrupt unit cohesion, DADT was written to prevent openly gay people from serving (Belkin and Bateman 2003).

This line of reasoning conflates social cohesion (or the positive interactions and friendships shared within a group) with task cohesion (or the ability of a group to function together toward a common goal). DADT attempts to protect task cohesion by arguing about social cohesion (or camaraderie). There is considerable evidence to indicate that social cohesion and task cohesion are separate issues, and it is task cohesion that is important to military effectiveness (Griffith 1988; Kier 1998; MacCoun 1993, 1996; MacCoun et al. 2006; Mullen and Copper 1994). Further, the literature indicates that task cohesion will not be negatively impacted by the presence of openly gay service members nor by straight service members' (potential) discomfort with homosexuality (c.f. Herek and Belkin 2005; MacCoun 1996; MacCoun et al. 2006). While I do not wish to similarly conflate these terms, my discussion of cohesion can be assumed to focus on issues of social cohesion (unless otherwise noted), since this is the line of reasoning that DADT employs, and I believe it suffice to say that other literature has done an adequate job of arguing this important distinction. DADT claims that (social) cohesion will be harmed by the presence of openly gay service members, which I will interrogate in more detail.

Referring to the intense need for management around his gay identity, Carl says, “Once you know, you can't un-know. The truth is a virus. And it spreads like a virus.” The truth, it seems, is a thorny matter, at once undesirable because of the fear of discharge and yet necessary for many to build bonds of cohesion and friendship. It is through these bonds of cohesion and friendship that we can see a paradox generated by DADT: gay and lesbian personnel are required to stay silent about their sexual orientation because to do otherwise would supposedly damage group cohesion and camaraderie in the military, but it is this very silence that damages the cohesion that DADT is intended to protect.

Similar to Malcolm's quote above, many of my interview subjects refer to the camaraderie in the military via a family metaphor. They valued the bond and connection they felt with others in the military and talk about how others are constantly involved in their personal business, implying a lack of privacy (similar to that discussed above), and also implying that other military members are a connected and integral part of their lives. The military breaks a person's connection with their former (civilian) life and remakes it in connection with other military members. So, this new family, or group, structure is integral for members of the military.

Samuel's story of going to a bar with two military friends is an example of the connection between low privacy and high group connection. Samuel recalls watching his two male friends have sex next to each other on the same bed, each with a woman they'd just picked up at the bar:

They're both buck naked, going to town on two different girls. And I'm standing there going, oh, my god, oh, my god…. It was a mess.

Though shocking for Samuel, this semipublic sex experience was another way to demonstrate the bonds of closeness and camaraderie between military members. If we ignore the possible perspectives of the women involved, for Samuel's friends to have sex next to each other (and for Samuel to be included as a voyeur) shows not only how comfortable the men were with each other but also the closeness they felt being able to share what is for many considered to be an intimate, private experience.

The Camaraderie Paradox

The Limitations of Openness

Despite the many ways in which interviewees described a sense of openness and family-ness, they also were very aware of the ways in which DADT prevented them from being as open as they would like. DADT creates a very real pressure to stay silent through a threat of discharge should a gay or lesbian person's sexual orientation become known. As such, many gay and lesbian personnel stay closeted in the military. David, for example, describes feeling a great deal of paranoia and stress around having to keep quiet about being gay. He didn't reenlist “because of the threat of being discharged any day and all my hard work would be for nothing,” a reason that demographer Gary Gates (2007) says accounts for between 3,000 and 4,000 trained service members leaving the military each year. In fact, ten of my interviewees were discharged under DADT, and another two left voluntarily because of the pressures they felt from the law. Over half of my subjects indicated that if circumstances allowed it (namely the repeal of DADT), they would return to military service. Despite the potential gains in increased openness and stronger friendships associated with being openly gay or lesbian (Herek 1996), coming out in the military carries with it a risk that many see as too high. Harry demonstrates this risk by saying he was “always…on guard.” He referred to the risk of losing his retirement pension if it became known that he was gay by asking several times in the interview, “Who do you trust with your million-and-a-half dollar secret?” Others share similar stories of paranoia:

I…constantly live[d] in fear.…I felt like I had something to hide, and I felt like if somebody found out, that would be it. (Nick, after watching others be kicked out under DADT)

It's a slippery slope. Once one person finds out that you don't trust, you're done. So there goes all your mental security and safety and sanity until you either change duty stations or get out. (Maria)

This kind of fear was not unwarranted. Many of my subjects had witnessed or experienced very real consequences of DADT, such as having a relationship with a significant other deteriorate over the possibility of tapped phone calls, watching other gay personnel come out to someone and then be turned in and discharged, and even being found out and turned in themselves. For example, Frank was blackmailed by the pastor at his old church, a retired navy chaplain, who had found an online profile where Frank listed himself as gay. Though Frank deleted the profile, the pastor ultimately sent a previously saved hard copy to Frank's command and then applied pressure to have Frank discharged.

It is clear, then, that many gay and lesbian service members understand and experience this culture of fear and paranoia generated by DADT. Horror stories of “outings gone wrong” abound, both among my interviewees and also in books, magazine articles, and other media sources. This fear can be experienced even without an explicitly known consequence. Because of frequent inspections and room searches, some subjects worried about items such as gay porn being found stashed in a locker or drawer. “We had a surprise room inspection,” says Kyle, “…and they left, and then [my roommate] told me that he was sweating the whole time because he had like some gay porn magazine or something, in his stuff, and they were rifling through everything.” These risks are real and did (and still do) happen, and it would be incorrect to discount them, but though they exemplify (and contribute to) this culture of fear, these examples are all individual-level accounts of the impact of DADT. When we look at overall DADT discharge rates, we see a slightly different picture of the risk involved in being gay or lesbian and serving in the military. Although it is impossible to know exactly how many gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are currently serving, Gates (2004) used the 2000 census to estimate this figure at approximately 65,000. However, discharges under DADT have only ranged from 600 to 1,200 each year since 1994, a relatively small portion of the gays and lesbians estimated to be serving. Based on these numbers, the likelihood of gay and lesbian personnel being discovered and discharged under DADT is only about 1–2%. If this is correct, it implies that there is a significant discrepancy between the perceived risk of discharge under DADT and the actual risk of discharge inherent in the law's enforcement.

Regardless of their stance on coming out, many interview subjects report that the effect of maintaining the identity privacy required by DADT puts a barrier between them and those with whom they serve. This barrier ends up damaging the very cohesion that DADT is intended to protect. The culture of strong bonds and high group connection of the military means that maintaining the silence and privacy imposed by DADT is difficult if not impossible. In other words, to maintain privacy in the military (of any sort) disrupts camaraderie (and therefore, cohesion), and yet privacy regarding (homo)sexual orientation is required. This is the camaraderie paradox of DADT: DADT requires gay and lesbian personnel to remain silent about their sexual orientation in order to protect the high level of cohesion within the military; paradoxically, the actual effect of such silence is a disruption of that very cohesion and camaraderie. Elaborating on the double bind of this camaraderie paradox, Stephen says:

[P]eople know that you're lying. And when they know that you're lying,…that creates a problem. Because…lies are not good for relationships. And, basically, you're being asked to lie every single day by your superiors. Now [how] on God's green earth can that be good for unit cohesion, when everyone in the unit knows that you're lying? And that they know that you're holding a secret.

Harry would agree: “If you feel that some member is dissembling or is outright lying or whatever then you got to think, well, maybe there's something that does not help in the sense of camaraderie or unit cohesion.”

To demonstrate the competing pressures to both stay closeted and come out, Gerry's story is especially revealing. Gerry talks about the stress he felt in not coming out to anyone while in the military. Before enlisting, Gerry thought that he would simply keep his sexual orientation secret from his coworkers; though, his friends and family back home knew (Susan describes a similar story). However, he soon found this to be “very stressful because I always had to…[live] a double life” being near enough to home that he could go home on the weekends and be openly gay but then “come back to base Sunday night and…have to lie about exactly what I did.” Though they never detected his lies, he believes they “could always tell when someone's not being completely honest,” and this “set up a barrier for really strong relationships with [him] and [his] friends.” This barrier between Gerry and his friends disrupted the camaraderie and cohesion that would otherwise have been present. In imposing silence around sexual orientation, DADT actually inhibits the bonding and group quality the military (as a total institution) is trying to realize.

Breaking the Silence

Ben's story is particularly useful for highlighting this tension between silence and group bonding. Ben is one of several interviewees who came out to his friends in the military. After coming out to his friends, Ben tried to offer them some level of physical privacy as they adjusted to this new knowledge, at least when it came to the shower:

I'd showered together with the same…guys, everyday at this one duty station and as it happened…after I came out to them I was gonna at least give them a day to sort of process or whatever before we hopped back in the shower together.…Our thing was…we'd go work out. We'd grab some food. We'd take a shower. We'd go to the base theater and see a different movie every night. And, so I told them I was gonna shower after the movie that night. And they're like, ‘Fuck you. You stink. You're gonna shower right now.’ And so, y'know, I guess it was their sort of way—I mean, I knew they knew what I was doing but they were…not having it.

Ben's story shows that group activities, even a group shower, can help form solidarity, camaraderie, and cohesion (as well as boost morale) among military members. Having just broken an imposed barrier of informational privacy, Ben attempted to allow his friends physical privacy in the shower as they “process” this new information. However, in a total institution such as the military, the more things that can be done together, the better a person's identity with the group (instead of with the self) is reinforced (Goffman 1961). To take separate showers would actually interrupt this bonding. This disruption to the camaraderie of the group was unacceptable to his friends. Further, this sense of group identity is what prompted Ben's friends to override his attempts at separation and instead demonstrate his continued inclusion in the group.

Ben's story is not the only example of military personnel coming out to fellow service members. Though many gay and lesbian personnel try a variety of ways to keep their sexuality private, they continually find these methods thwarted by the close bonds encouraged in the military (what Malcolm and others referred to as a family culture):

It wasn't like I went out of my way to tell them. It was more like it came up, because your personal life does come up in the military. You're with these people twenty-four/seven. I just opted not to lie. (David)

There were times where, you know, just people asking you, and no one would ask to bring any harm. But…Don't Ask is a myth.…People ask all the time because…the military has a family culture and community and the people are always very inquisitive about your life. (Jack)

In everyday social interactions, questions about one's personal life come up. Even if a person is never directly asked if they are gay, questions about his or her personal life will often bring up the dilemma of how open to be about themselves. These continual questions again bring gay and lesbian service members face to face with the camaraderie paradox DADT creates; they must say enough to engage in the level of connection that is expected in the military but remain silent enough so they can (hopefully) avoid the possible risks imposed by the law.

For some, the lack of the strong bonds they believe they should be experiencing motivated their coming out. The desire to be part of that connected family of the military was enough motivation to stop maintaining informational privacy around their sexual orientation.

It got to the point where I had to tell somebody. I couldn't keep it inside anymore because it was so stressful. (David)

David lucked out; the first person he came out to was his best friend who responded with, “that's okay, I'm gay, too.” Paul, on the other hand, found himself continually frustrated by being unable to fully answer questions about his personal life, a severe hindrance to being able to form strong connections with others around him:

They kept asking me ‘you wanna get hooked up with this girl I know?’ No. ‘Why not, she's really cute?’ No. And they'd pester me for like a week. And finally I was just like I can't take this any more, I am gay, leave me alone. ‘Oh. Well, you wanna go out with this guy I know?’ Oh, my god. I'm just going to curl up in a little ball and die now.

Though Paul's coming out was precipitated by a frustrating experience he wished to avoid, his friends' ultimate response also demonstrates the level of acceptance that many gays and lesbians experienced from those with whom they served.

Considering the kinds of bonds between gay and straight personnel reported by my respondents, it may at first glance seem amiss that I chose not to simultaneously interview straight military personnel on some of these issues. After all, these experiences are relational and bidirectional, so it would seem to strengthen my argument to also include information from my respondents' former colleagues. Though there may be some merit to this, I believe the inclusion of such information to be unnecessary. As I stated early on, my primary interest is in the lived experience of gay and lesbian personnel and the ways in which DADT is played out through their direct experiences. In other words, how is DADT lived out via the lives of those most directly impacted? As such, my locus of attention is on gay and lesbian personnel, not their straight coworkers. Additionally, while there is considerable work that indicates a persistent lack of comfort with gays and lesbians on the part of straight military personnel, the literature also indicates that this trend is decreasing with time (Estrada and Weiss 1999; Herek 1996; Hicknell 2000; Rea 1997; Rodgers 2006). While there will clearly be some military personnel (as will be true of civilians) who express varying levels of discomfort with gays and lesbians or homosexuality in general, the percentage of those reporting such attitudes is decreasing. Further, these studies indicate that association and interaction with gays and lesbians decreases these negative attitudes (which is supported by several quotes and stories already listed); in addition, data from foreign militaries with no gay ban indicate that negative attitudes are not a reliable predictor of straight peoples' ability to work effectively with gays and lesbians (c.f. Frank 2009, Chapter 6). In light of all this, it seems that interviewing my respondents' colleagues is unlikely to reveal any further significantly useful information.

The Impact of Coming Out

Coming out is resistance to the stricture “Don't Tell,” and yet, in complete contradiction to the intent of the law, rather than reducing or harming unit cohesion, these self-revelations were ways to open friendships to new depths. The following three examples show non-negative (and even positive) consequences of violating the prohibition imposed by DADT:

  • After coming out to his friends, Kyle said, “We were closer and we could – there was a sense like you could hang out without having this barrier up…They felt like they could really trust me.…Once you took that sigh of relief, once you broke down that barrier, it was really great because you could relax and just, like, be normal.”

  • Albert found that coming out strengthened his relationships with others, allowing them to build more trust with each other.

  • David says, “It wasn't until I was more open that I did feel that level of camaraderie, that sense of family, that…everyone else gets from the military.” He tells the story of coming out to a religiously conservative roommate. Though his roommate at first took issue with David's sexuality, they learned to respect each other through open dialogue. “By the time I left…to go on to my next part of my training, he was introducing me to his mom as one of the coolest people he'd ever met.”

It is tempting to say that these examples simply resolve the camaraderie paradox: ignore the law, remove the privacy barriers in place (by coming out), and cohesion will increase and everything will function well. Many of the examples listed would seem to suggest just such a process. However, though these examples show how coming out helped build camaraderie and cohesion, the paradoxical constraints of DADT do still exist even amidst this kind of openness. As Annie says,

The fact that I was actually breaking the policy and breaking the policy openly so that everyone around me knew that [I was gay] – …they were like, we're not going to tell on you for breaking this policy because we like you – that puts you in this…vulnerable position where there is no way that I could have ever turned around and tried to enforce a policy on anybody else, right? Just from the standpoint of knowing that I had given them my trust and that they were holding it, and then I couldn't ever be an enforcer.

Annie's example is a reminder that navigating the camaraderie paradox of DADT is not as simple as just coming out to everyone. This paradox cannot be resolved individually since it is a structural paradox. To maintain privacy about one's (homo)sexual orientation disrupts the camaraderie and cohesion so valued in the military, but to out oneself, even amidst the host of likely positive results, still carries with it not only the (small, but possible) risk of discharge or other unfavorable results but also a new double bind with regard to enforcement and credibility. In other words, this resistance to DADT (by being out when it is not allowed) comes with a price (Abdullah 2005; Armaline 2005). The price of this resistance (at least in this case) is that no matter how accepting friends may be, there always remains the specter of when something could change for the worse.

Queer Space in the Total Institution

As I have shown, DADT is ultimately a means of furthering the military as a total institution. Total institutions, at their heart, are about reshaping identity from an individual one to a group one. Not only is DADT deployed to protect the (alleged) physical privacy of straight personnel, it is also intended to limit the various identities one may have in the military: military identity becomes synonymous with heterosexual identity. DADT is designed to regulate the appearance of gay identity in the military by not allowing such an identity marker to be expressed, thereby further mortifying the self (of gay personnel) in favor of maintaining strong connections among the military's ranks. Ironically, this push for “identity privacy” is based on the accepted and acknowledged lack of physical privacy. Essentially, to maintain its standard of physical openness, the military must find a way to conceal homosexuality within its ranks.

How are these contradictions managed? This question brings us to thinking about a new layer of DADT. In his discussion of total institutions, Goffman describes “free spaces” in which the totality of the institution may not be complete. In his conceptualization of it, these are spaces where the authorities of the institution tacitly allow a violation of the rules. What happens, however, when such spaces in the total institution occur without approval? Further, what about cases in which these ruptures of the total institution are built into the very system that they rupture? DADT is an example of how, within total institutions, there may be places where the institution's control is not complete, where identities may not be completely rewritten to the desires of the institution (Goffman 1961; McCorkel 1998). Further, in the case of DADT, it is the institutions itself that enables the formation of these ruptures, in this case, through their own policies (Warner 2002).

These ruptures around rewritten identities call for a queer theoretical analysis. Queer theory at its core is about contesting, challenging, and destabilizing the notion of a unified identity. Queer theory sees identity as arbitrary, unstable, and exclusionary and aims not to abandon identity but to render what identity means and represents open, making it contestable to multiple voices (Pascoe 2007; Seidman 1996). It is this very instability that is at the heart of these ruptures in the total institution, thus making an approach through the lens of queer theory quite apropos. I draw on queer theory arguments to define what I call queer space and then use this framing of queer space to explain some of the broad impacts on (and disruptions of) identity inherent to DADT.

Defining Queer Space

What is queer space? In defining and explaining queer space, I draw on what cultural theorist Michael Warner (2002) conceptualizes as a counterpublic and sociologist Jill McCorkel (1998) analytically describes as critical space in the context of total institutions. To extend this work, I am defining queer space as a site of simultaneous resistance to and embeddedness in a dominant culture or institution. Queer space is in fundamental tension with this dominant space; it is formed from its conflict with its cultural environment yet is structured by alternative understandings and assumptions.

Queer space should not be mistaken as something concretely spatial, located in some physicality. Though sociologists have recently begun to take account of the importance of place (cf. Gieryn 2000), it is also important to clarify the distinction between place (a discrete, physical locality) and space (which can be physically grounded but can also exist in the abstract). Thus, queer space is not a “thing” or even a “place” (although it might be associated with this), but is a space, and is best conceptualized as a process of (resistant) interaction among its participants. Part of my intent behind the term queer space is that “queer” is an integral part of the term. Queer space is not necessarily about gay people (or things) but is about the dynamics associated with this space of resistance to identity (re)formation.Footnote 5

Queer space, then, is embodied through lived interaction and as such, participants in queer space both are citizens in the dominant space of which they are a part and yet are marked off from this dominant public in some way, though this marking-off does not have to be through some readily identifiable trait nor does it even have to be made consciously or explicitly known within the context of the queer space (McCorkel 1998; Warner 2002). It does not require a certain location or even physical distance from the dominant space of which it is resistant; queer space may be achieved and deployed via gestures and language “not understood by the dominant” (Guzmán 1997, p. 220). Further, queer space is resistant to dominant discourse in direct relation to the strength and frequency of interaction and communication among its participants. In fact, queer space is founded on (and exists within) these very interactions. Queer space is aware of its subordinate status to the dominant culture or institution, but in a way that empowers rather than limits, since participation in queer space is a means of forming and transforming members' identities and senses of self (McCorkel 1998; Warner 2002).

We can best see queer space in the context of DADT through a set of informal but robust social interactions among lesbian and gay military personnel (what I describe below as the gay underground network). This direct interaction is resistance to the totalizing discourse of DADT, which states that the expressed identities underneath these interactions should not be expressed in the first place. Further, the articulation of such identities to other military gays and lesbians is a means of redefining the meanings of both military and gay identity. In other words, this network is an embodiment of queer space in the military.

“...your own little mafia”: The Gay Underground Network

The experiences of many gays and lesbians serving under DADT reveal a very interesting example of queer space. Many of my interviewees discussed the interactions they shared with other military gays and lesbians. Whether in small groups or large ones, these social interactions among gay and lesbian personnel is notable largely due to the fact that DADT would ostensibly preclude such a possibility from occurring. In labeling these social interactions, I borrow from one of my interviewees, Jack, who referred to something he called the gay underground network. The gay underground network, or GUN for short, is a very loosely structured network of gay and lesbian service members who find each other either by chance or through connections that other people know. Many of my subjects describe being able to tap into this network wherever they were and claimed that it was incredibly easy to find other gay and lesbian personnel. “I mean, they were just friends,” says Jack, “You sort of have your own little mafia. Because there wasn't a command, a major command anyway, where I could not call someone that I knew who was [gay], or someone [who] knew someone who was [gay].” Some didn't even think of it as a network, per se, but simply noted how easily they met up with other gay personnel and the social contacts that grew from such connections. All that is really needed to develop this queer space is to connect with other military gays and lesbians, as Paul illustrates:

And at one point I'm out talking to people and I eventually run into gay people and, of course, whisper, whisper, whisper, secret handshake, decoder ring, and everything else. And they're like, hey, come on out, just hang out, just relax. Hang around with your own kind, I guess. And it really kind of dawned on me that there's this huge support network there. I mean, I never knew it going in. It's just all the gay people hang out, all the straight people that hang out with gay people are cool with them, they hang out and just – I mean, it's nice. It's almost like a little sub-community.

The GUN is a clear example of queer space. The GUN is a subgroup whose members are citizens of some dominant space (the military) yet are still marked off in some way (being gay and expressing that to others who are also gay). The GUN stays hidden (private), but it is likewise public—at least to those in the GUN—in its expression of identity, solidarity, and even itself (Warner 2002). In this way, participants in the GUN are indeed marked off from the dominant public of the military. Further, if we think of queer space as being at heart a process of interaction among its participants, the GUN is clearly such an example since it, too, only exists in the context of the interaction shared among gay and lesbian military personnel; it does not have a specific location nor a specific time boundary on its existence.

The GUN does not exist in a vacuum but exists instead in direct opposition and resistance to the dominant requirements of DADT while also being constituted because of those very requirements. True to form as an example of queer space, the GUN exists as both an accommodation and resistance to DADT. In the context of the military, being gay is clearly deviant; yet, by engaging in “out of place practices” (Gieryn 2000, p. 480) such as being a part of the GUN (which involves embracing the deviance of being gay), gay and lesbian military personnel turn that deviance into a form of resistance as well.

The Significance of the GUN

On one level, the GUN is significant simply by the fact of its existence. According to DADT, open interactions among gay and lesbian personnel as openly gay or lesbian are not supposed to be allowed, yet very clearly, they are occurring, allowed or not. Though these networks have been noted both before and after DADT by other scholars and writers, they remain undertheorized. Bérubé (1990) and Zeeland (1993) indicate that this network has existed since well before the period of DADT, at least as far back as World War II, while Lehmkuhl (2006) shows a post-DADT example. Anderson and Smith (1993) suggest that many gay and lesbian military personnel use social networks and social support as part of processing a gay identity in an environment hostile to that identity. These networks may include seeking out other gay and lesbian people in the military (or perhaps avoiding them) as well as finding straight personnel who are supportive and understanding.

However, we can also recognize that the GUN is significant beyond even this initial level in the ways that it shapes and transforms participants' identities, an important component of what queer space is about. Through the GUN, we see a queer space created by DADT in which a form of gay identity is produced that is not only at odds with the total institutional nature of the military but also unique in the way it makes sense of gay identity in a military context. As cultural theorist Michael Warner (2002) notes, “Homosexuals can exist in isolation; but gay people...exist by virtue of the world they elaborate together, and gay...identity is always fundamentally inflected by the nature of that world” (pp. 57–8). Symbolic interactionist theory tells us something similar (Blumer 1986; Mead 1932): since our identity is formed in interaction with others, if there is no GUN in which to interact, the significance of a prohibited gay identity is going to be rather low. DADT tries to censor discourse around gay identity in the military, but this silence turns out to actually further produce both the discourse and the identity that it purports to limit (Foucault 1978). We can most clearly see the ways in which the GUN mitigates gay military identity by looking at the different experiences of how (and whether or not) people find the GUN.

Though easy to do, tapping into the GUN is not inevitable. When asked if they had any kinds of interaction with other gays and lesbians while in the military, both Carl and Joe said no, not that they knew of, even though they themselves were out to others. Of course, this stands to reason: though the existence of the GUN is plausible (and perhaps likely) in spite of DADT, there is no guarantee that everyone will find it. For example, Richard and Harry were the only two people in my sample never to come out to another military member during their period of service. Both officers and doctors (though in different branches), Richard and Harry had served for over 20 years each and had been completely closeted the entire time. “It's a major sacrifice of a huge part of who I was” (Richard). One of the reasons they each retired when they did was that they each “wanted to become a gay man,” continues Richard, “I wanted to be able to...fulfill...the sexual part of my personality, which I could not do in the military.” Harry, who had retired slightly over half a year prior to our interview, said he was “still getting used to living a life of integrity.” He likens the process to switching from a “small, 1950's portable black and white” TV to a “wide screen, high definition TV.” These references to “becoming a gay man” show that one's identity as gay can be mitigated in a variety of ways by the effects of DADT. Whether or not one strongly (or even fully) identifies as gay or lesbian is significantly affected by the opportunities one has to express this identity, something that the GUN provides. Neither Richard nor Harry managed to find the GUN at any point in the incredible span of their service period. As such, neither came to fully own and experience an identity as gay until after leaving the military.

The different experiences in finding (or not finding) the network demonstrate how gay identity in the military is constructed and reinforced in multiple ways (and, indeed, there are multiple ways to express identity; Gamson and Moon 2004). The full impact of the GUN on expression of gay identity is perhaps best seen among those service members who were involved in a network at one duty station but could not find a new one after transferring to another. Though the high mobility of the military often facilitates tapping into a network after a change of duty station, this is not always the case, and some subjects reported that tapping into a network after a move was difficult, if not impossible. For example, Susan talks about being actively involved in a GUN while stationed in California, but then moving to Texas where

...it was sort of like a whole new thing where nobody knew, and then I had to make all new friends. And I really didn't...once I had more freedom, that I didn't have to be around people I worked with as much, then it was just like a day job, it was like a 9-to-5 job where I was closeted at work and then I would come home and then I'd go out with my civilian friends who were gay. I made more friends that didn't have anything to do with the military after I left California because I had the freedom to do that.

Susan's identity as a lesbian never really changed between her two duty stations, but her identity as a lesbian in the military context did. In California, she interacted heavily with other military gays and lesbians, but in Texas, she didn't. Her sense of compartmentalization and dissociation of sexual and military identities increased with this change of assignment because of the lack of connection to the network. Being able to share a hidden identity with others helps to reinforce this identity and make it strong and more “real” (McCorkel 1998); without such a reinforcing network, Susan's identity as a lesbian was destabilized and dissociated from being a core sense of self.

As I have said, DADT requires silence around gay identities and activities, yet the military as an institution discourages and eliminates the ability for most personal silences. The GUN can therefore be seen not only as a rupture of the total institutional nature of the military but also as a very tangible example of queer space brought into being by that rupture. Through the GUN, we can see how broader military norms of cohesion and camaraderie get (re)created and (re)established on a small scale while still maintaining a form of the required secrecy, at least to everyone outside the group. The secrecy required by DADT may be maintained for anyone outside of the GUN, but within the GUN, everyone is “in the know;” in other words, the supposedly not-allowed informational privacy is maintained and violated at the same time. Further, a new group identity is formed; one founded not just on being in the military but coupled with this open secret of being gay. While broader unit cohesion may suffer from the imposed silence of DADT, members of the GUN form their own new kind of cohesion: a loosely bound network of other gays and lesbians serving in the military. Here, we clearly see how DADT paradoxically ruptures and weakens the very totality of the military that it is trying to further and maintain.

What Value is Queer Space?

The paradoxes created by the GUN help us to see what I am calling queer space. It is important to recall that these paradoxes exist due to the very constraints created by DADT. Queer space needs this kind of constraint in order to form the resistance inherent to its being. The GUN, for example, would not have such a powerful pull on forming gay military identity if there were not a law such as DADT (or the outright bans that existed prior to 1993) that prohibits gays in the military in the first place; this is yet another paradox. As such it is useful to ask if the resistance inherent to queer space (in this case, as seen through the GUN) is constituted by some external force (in this case DADT), then in what sense is that resistance significant (Abdullah 2005)?

Consider again the GUN. While participation in the GUN is clearly a resistance to the mandate of not openly expressing a gay identity, the GUN is still in a subordinate position relative to the dominant space in which it exists. For example, should DADT ever be repealed, it is highly unlikely that this would occur through actions on the part of members of the GUN. Nonetheless, the GUN is significant in the respect that it is a powerful force for effecting gay military identity in an appreciable way. This in and of itself shows an effective resistance to the total institutional nature of the military via DADT. Further, it is also significant in the fact that it exists when by all accounts it should not be allowed. Even more so, gay people are not the only participants (recall that queer is not simply a modifier to space, but an integral component to it, and therefore queer space is not limited to queer-identified people); some straight people are aware of (and involved in) the GUN to no apparent detrimental effect to them or the rest of the military.

Queer space is valuable in thinking about the ways that identity is impacted in structured (and often unexpected) ways. One concrete example of this is that my research shows a way to advance the concept of total institution. Goffman made a significant contribution in his description of the total institution. It allows us to think about forms of power and meanings of identity formation in a structural way. The concept of the total institution forces us to step back and recognize yet another way that individual identity is shaped in profound ways by social context (especially a totalizing social context) and can also be stripped (mortified) by institutional pressures. The idea of queer space complicates total institutions by making us realize the ways in which total institutions are totalizing without actually being total. Queer space allows us to see the ways ruptures can form and, within these ruptures, ways that identity can be created and expressed. In other words, queer space shows us ways that identity is formed in the context of active (if indirect) resistance to a totalizing discourse. With Goffman, I argue that identity formation is a social phenomenon; through my discussion of queer space, I show how there are multiple social forces at work in this formation.

Sociologist Jill McCorkel (1998) gives a non-military, non-gay example of queer space (though she refers to it as critical space) in a jail's drug rehab unit (also considered a total institution) and the ways that inmates reject the imposed label of being an addict. In other words, queer space is not only a space for queer people. It is worth noting that such ruptures also may not be exclusively tied to total institutions. They may also appear in more general institutions that attempt to enact some kind of totalizing reach. By that I mean we can see ruptures and queer space of this sort when an organization institutes some kind of rule or regulation meant to harshly or tightly control something. Similar examples of queer space can be found in the US government during the Cold War. Civil service in the federal government can hardly be thought of as a total institution, yet rules at the time explicitly forbade homosexuals from holding such jobs (and actively sought out and fired them). Historian David K. Johnson (2004) shows ways in which hidden networks of gays and lesbians formed in spite of the rules, as well as the ways in which people navigated the requirements of secrecy. The networks that formed from this “open secret” (Sedgwick 1990) show another example of queer space much like the GUN.

Foucault (1978) reminds us that even silence is discourse and actually serves to galvanize and produce gay identity in a space where it supposedly is not allowed. In silencing the expression of gay identity in the military, we have actually increased the potential discourse around being gay or straight; it is what Foucault would call the incitement to confession. In other words, DADT creates a queer space in which a form of gay identity is produced that is at odds with the total institutional nature of the military. As with the government investigations of homosexual civil servants during the cold war, such prohibitions of homosexual personnel only reify the distinction between “heterosexual” and “homosexual” by requiring the creation of a clearly identifiable group for target. The prohibition of gays and lesbians and the supposed “silence” around such an identity contributes to constituting the boundaries of an identifiable group. As historians Bérubé (1990) and Johnson (2004) have pointed out, imposing a ban on gays and lesbians in the military only served to further solidify the category of gay, pushing people to choose within a binary of gay and straight and more consciously articulate such an identity. It is out of such identity articulation and production that these pockets of resistance—these queer spaces—are able to form.

Conclusion

DADT is meant to prohibit gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military in order to protect and preserve the level of cohesion considered essential to the military's functioning. However, as my research demonstrates, it actually creates queer space in the total institution of the military. Perhaps the true paradox of queer space in the total institution is that such queer spaces come into existence because of rules promoted to supposedly maintain or further the totality of the very institutions they rupture.

It should be clear by now that DADT not only impacts identity production through queer spaces but also produces real harm to military personnel and to the stated goals of the military itself. The very things that DADT intends to protect by requiring silence on the part of gays and lesbians are instead harmed by this very silence. We can see that some of the more extreme costs of DADT on the part of gay and lesbian service members are, though apparently rare, still common and severe enough to warrant close consideration. Further, some of those costs seem outside the scope of the law's intent: no one should have to deal with identity blackmail or destroyed relationships because of a law designed to protect unit cohesion, especially when such costs only occur because of the law itself. These, along with the job loss associated with military discharge (the only intended consequence of being an out gay or lesbian in the military), are human costs. When these kinds of costs occur, particularly without the supposed benefits that are predicted to be present, it's time to make some changes. The contradictions of DADT cannot be resolved while the law is in effect because those contradictions are created by DADT. Rather than asking gay and lesbian personnel to change and monitor their interactions with those around them, we should make a structural change by replacing DADT with a policy of complete non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.