Troops speak out on gays serving openly

When Adm. Mike Mullen stunned the Senate Armed Services committee earlier this month by saying it’s time to stop kicking gay service members out just for being gay, he also acknowledged that the Defense Department is working in a data vacuum on this issue.

“I do not know what the impact will be, and I do not know what the implementation requirements will be,” Mullen said. “There’s very little objective data on this.”

Now there is.

In the most comprehensive survey yet on service members’ attitudes about gays in the military, more than 3,000 Military Times readers contacted randomly by e-mail and through fliers placed in random newsstand copies late last fall offer a clear glimpse about attitudes and experiences in today’s military.

Respondents answered questions about their own sexual orientation, their attitudes about the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, who should get to decide whether to change the law, and their level of concern about how a potential change could affect morale and unit cohesion.

The majority of troops are generally happy with the current policy. But opposition to a change is dropping steadily.

The percentage of respondents opposing repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” fell to just 51 percent, a decline of 12 percentage points since 2003. The percentage favoring repeal, meanwhile, rose over the same period 6 points, to 30 percent, among active-duty readers of Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times. The survey was conducted from Nov. 11 through Nov. 30.

Military Times also interviewed about two dozen career service members for this article, including 11 who identified themselves as gay. We agreed not to identify them in order to protect their careers.