Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Blanche was shocked by the graphic photos of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners that hit the media in early May. It is not surprising that the military mistreats prisoners. Any careful reading of news accounts about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay would reveal that abuse is widespread in military prisons. But Blanche had not suspected the degree to which such abuse was homosexually oriented.

A little over ten years ago, Congress passed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which modified the military's blanket ban on gay personnel to one which bans openly gay personnel. During the controversy in 1993, the major argument against allowing gays in the military was essentially the following: "Since soldiers hate fags, they're not willing to fight with them or share tents with them. If you despise the people you're fighting with, then the cohesion of your unit suffers." The "unit cohesion" thesis parades as a rational argument for excluding openly gay people from the military, but it is merely window-dressing for the irrational fear and hatred that many military personnel feel toward homosexuality.

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The events at the Abu Ghraib prison show this very clearly. In the minds of some military intelligence, the best way to "soften up" prisoners was to force them into real or simulated homosexual acts. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker reports that an internal military investigation found that male prisoners were threatened with rape, forced to simulate oral sex with each other, made to masturbate in front of guards and other prisoners, and sodomized with chemical lights and broomsticks.

Furthermore, the abuse took place in full view of scores of people, and soldiers were so blasé about the goings-on that they felt free to pose for pictures next to the naked, humiliated prisoners. We must avoid painting all soldiers with a broad brush, however. The reason that the abuse came to light was that a few conscientious military personnel objected and reported the situation to the authorities, who eventually launched an investigation.

What difference would it have made if President Clinton had won the gays in the military controversy ten years ago? We can't know for sure, of course, but Miss Poubelle likes to think that the presence of openly gay and lesbian people might have done something to alleviate the homophobic nature of the prison abuse scandal.

When there are women in military units, this must surely act as some deterrent to the rape of female civilians and prisoners. When there are black, Asian, or Latino soldiers present, this must help curtail racial abuse. Because the U.S. military contains Muslim and Jewish soldiers, we know of few instances of religiously motivated abuse towards prisoners. In all these cases, the presence of soldiers who have a special awareness of violence motivated by gender, race, or religion helps to curb abuse.

Miss Poubelle does not want to be too unrealistic in her expectations There are, of course, some gay men who might take pleasure in abusing unwilling victims. Every group has some assholes and sociopaths, and we're no exception.

But in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Miss Poubelle hopes that most openly gay and lesbian soldiers would have been more likely to object to homosexual abuse of prisoners. This sort of abuse is homophobic in its essence, since it views sexual contact between men as one of the worst forms of punishment. Openly gay and lesbian soldiers may have spared us all this shame and prevented the inevitable hate-filled backlash, thus keeping us all safer.