Exh idgyadfrfr

 II. BEYOND GUNS AND TAFFETA  https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1326&context=wmjowl  William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Volume 18 (2011-2012)

Issue 1 William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law: 2011 Special Issue: The Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

December 2011

Article 5

  The Few, The Proud, The Gays: Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Trap of Tolerance

Suzanna Danuta Walters

And how significant have changes in the bigger cultural milieu have been to the decision to—finally—get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? While surely the relationship between current ideologies concerning “gayness” and military policy is not a singular and linear one, changing ideolo- gies of immutability, identity, citizenship, and public perception have played a part in the push to integrate. The polls have consistently revealed a growing majority in favor of open service and, to a much lesser extent but still significant, same-sex marriage.152 Many of our allies have had an open policy for years, with no “dire consequences” for morale or military effectiveness.153 And, surely, the more general cultural shift—reflected in polls but also of course in the by now banal visibility of LGBT folks in everyday life—makes it more tenable to repeal DADT (“the American people want this”) and pushes the mil- itary to match more closely the tenor of the times.154 Recent court rulings—easier now in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas—have also prompted the President to move on this, lest he seem both behind the times and out of sync with current legal reasoning.155

Freedom to marry and freedom to serve are the watchwords of the same-sex marriage and gay military service movements; both rely on classic liberal egalitarian and civil rights arguments to make the case for gaining access to these two social institutions.156 Both dis- courses depend (variously) on notions of immutability, discretion, and

While marriage and the military differ along these and other axes, they both retain enormous symbolic importance, particularly in their shared iconicity around citizenship and in the ways in which victory in these venues is seen by so many to signal a new era of tolerance and acceptance.163 The two—tolerance and acceptance— are inevitably linked in American discussions of rights and difference. We tend to think there is an easy transition from tolerance of the despised minority to a broader and deeper acceptance of that same group.164 We learn to tolerate and then we come to accept.165 Or so the story goes. But who is this “we” that tolerates? Who has the right to “accept” another? No civil rights movement worthy of the name has banked its future on being tolerated or accepted.166 Women did not demurely request tolerance; they demanded voting rights, pay

equity, and freedom from sexual violence.167 African Americans continue to struggle not for some bizarre “acceptance” of their skin tone, but for full and deep integration and inclusion in the American dream.168 Disabled Americans do not want to be tolerated; they want streets made accessible to them and laws strong enough to protect them from discrimination.169 Immigrants—Jews, Irish, Italians, and Latinos—who came into this country by the millions and over the hundreds of years of U.S. history—were often escaping persecution and discrimination.170 My grandparents were among them, Russian and Polish Jews leaving a world of pogroms and second-class lives. They, like today’s immigrants, came wanting—and often demanding— not simply respite from the tyranny of the majority but a robust in- tegration into this promising new land.171 I cannot imagine that the word “tolerance” was central to their immigrant vocabulary. To live freely and fully is not to be “tolerated,” but to be included, even sometimes to be celebrated. The language of tolerance is, in fact, antithetical to the goals of civil rights.172 The ethical alternative to discrimination and bigotry is not tolerance, but rational thought and a commitment to equality.173

For many gay liberals and their allies, tolerance and acceptance have been the dominant notes in the ongoing aria of American history.174 Like so many of the arguments for ending the ban on same-sex marriage, proponents of ending the ban on gays in the military advance a sameness argument (i.e., we just want to serve our country, or we just want to raise a family like everyone else). Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, a retired lesbian army officer who successfully challenged the military’s ban on homosexuals stated,

[w]hat I hope to represent is a part of the normality of being homosexual, of not being in leather or shaving my hair, but rather showing how much we are all alike . . . . If people can see the sameness of me to you, then perhaps they won’t have the walls that makes it so they have to hate us without a cause.175

It is also the case that the movement for open military service is predicated on an understanding of “gayness” as a discrete, know- able, legible, and utterable identity.176 To oppose DADT means you assume there is something clear to be asked and to be told. This is, undeniably, one of the persistent dilemmas of civil rights legislation and litigation around stigmatized minorities: how to gain rights, access, and freedoms while at the same time not enshrining (and creating) the very categories of identity that many believe to be par- tially responsible for the very abridgement of those freedoms. What happens, in other words, when Foucault goes to court?

For many queer radicals, on the other hand, the present—with its display of gay identity as a fashion accessory, its commodification, its cleaning up and dumbing down—represents the death knell of a more vibrant gay sensibility.177 There is much truth to this, and I my- self have added to the fears of what this kind of liberal inclusion excludes. But perhaps we are working with too weak a notion of inclusion or integration that does not distinguish it substantively enough from assimilation. Indeed, for gays and many others who cohere around a minority identity, both these terms have come to have a quite negative valence, as “inclusion” becomes the codeword for a kind of liberal “tolerance” that broaches no challenge to hetero- sexual dominion even as it lets a few queers sit at the table.178 There is a difference, however, between a robust, substantive integration and a thoughtless, commodified assimilation. For many gays, these are often confused. We so fear/reject the relentless project of com- modified assimilation that the integrationist project gets tossed out in the process of resisting assimilation.179

Just as “tolerance” leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of many gays, it is vital to remember that justice is not identical to equality, just as gay rights may not fully institute gay belonging.180 And while there is healthy debate within the gay community on goals and strategies, it is nevertheless the case that while any individual gay person may not care much about pride or sexual freedom (and another may care a great deal), all gays desire equal treatment and equal op- portunity and most deeply value inclusion.181

Would “victory” be signaled by formal moves towards equality and equal access (e.g., marriage rights, equal employment legislation) or is a more abstract and elusive “liberation” being sought? Is “tolerance” and “acceptance” all that can be hoped for, or is a more vivid “rainbow” of civic inclusion the golden ring? And what would a “robust integra- tion” that eschews simple assimilation but values the challenge of- fered by social and sexual difference actually look like?

The symbolic and iconic value of victories such as the two “m’s” of the military and marriage are heady indeed but, I would argue, not singularly or unambiguously “positive.” Surely removing struc- tural barriers and challenging legalized discrimination are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for full civic inclusion. But, by framing these gains in a discourse of tolerance, we set the bar too low. By avoid- ing thornier and more contentious and more challenging questions (e.g., how might full inclusion undermine the heteromasculinity at the heart of military culture? What can queer kinship say to bourgeois familialism? How can we detach acts from identities and still embrace egalitarian struggles?) we allow animus new tributaries and byways through our cultural waterways. Repeal, enjoin, sign up, and pledge your troth to God and country and legally wedded spouse. But do not imagine that this is all that we can imagine. It just might be that an army of lovers can only make war, not the queer new world that our electric bodies demand.