The truth about "unit cohesion": the excuse for barring out soldiers is the reverse of the truth, according to a new survey released exclusively to The Advocate.

As a staff sergeant who specialized in defusing roadside bombs and weapons of mass destruction, 25-year-old Brian Muller was crucial to the U.S. military during his 10-month stint in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks. He had top-secret security clearance and helped protect President George W. Bush at various times and Vice President Dick Cheney during his visit to the Middle East.

Though Muller was completely confident in his abilities, doubts and frustration about the need to hide his homosexuality as a serviceman prompted him to come out to his commander in 2003. "Especially because our stress level was already high, being told I had to hide was just ludicrous," he says. "I could not sit there and go through serving in a war that way. It was intolerable." Muller was swiftly discharged under the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

It is difficult to imagine that hundreds of gay and lesbian soldiers are still being discharged as the War on Terror continues and Iraq teeters between stability and chaos. The Defense Department has said that it needs all the bodies it can get as units around the world are stretched thin.

What angers most gay men and lesbians currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the U.S. military continues to believe that they are having a negative effect on morale or cohesion because of their sexuality. In a new survey of current and former service members that has been released exclusively to The Advocate, Nathaniel Frank, a senior research fellow at the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, charges that "don't ask, don't tell" actually causes what it purports to prevent. The policy is failing miserably during the current wars by keeping gay and straight soldiers from bonding or developing trust, which is a critical function in warfare, says Frank. "The most important finding was the consistency with which nearly all my sources said ace policy impeded their capacity to bond," he says. "The rationale for the policy is that gays undermine unit cohesion, and it increasingly looks like that is backward. It is the policy with its unique burdens on gays that is undermining cohesion."

Frank's data is mostly anecdotal, gleaned from interviews with 30 gay and lesbian soldiers starting earlier this year. He asked them about their experiences in the military under "don't ask, don't tell." Frank said the ban makes it nearly impossible to do statistically valid research because gay and lesbian soldiers, of whom there may be as many as 50,000 to 125,000, cannot be identified under the policy.

Frank's study also found that enforce merit of "don't ask, don't tell" is arbitrary and based more on the need for troops: Annual discharges of gays and lesbians steadily rose after implementation of "don't ask, don't tell," peaking in 2001 with 1,273 discharges, but have since dropped by about 40% to 787 discharges in 2003, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Nevertheless, since 1998 more than 3,000 gay or lesbian military specialists like Muller have been discharged, while the military has had to call up close to 5,000 reservists--people who are riving civilian lives and who may have been away from military life and training for quite some time--in order to fill the shortfall.

"You are losing talent that the military critically needs and forcing commanders to divert attention from their missions to pry into bedrooms, which undermines readiness," says Dixon Osburn, executive director of the SLDN. "The military is kicking out people who are gay when there are critical shortfalls."

Additionally, Frank found gay and lesbian soldiers are likely to forgo using important support services, such as medical care, psychological counseling, and religious consultations, for feat" of disclosing their orientation. Contrary to the commonly held view that "don't ask, don't tell" has made the environment better for gays in the military, Frank found the ban appears to enforce antigay sentiment by saying that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.

Frank's findings ring true for one lesbian soldier who gave her name only as Linda. A reservist who functions as a judge advocate general, she advises soldiers who are about to be deployed about various legal issues, including power of attorney and health care directives. She also helps military commanders with interpretation of military laws, such as "don't ask, don't tell."

Linda speaks of the "tension" between her civilian life--including being involved in a long-term relationship and being out at her job as a lawyer--and needing to stay in the closet when she is deployed one weekend every month and two full weeks a year. That closet, she says, includes not being able to receive care packages from her girlfriend, who she is also unable to list on military documents as the person to contact in the event that Linda is wounded or killed.

"A lot of military life is about personal bonding and laying down your life for one another," Linda says. "When you are in a situation where you have to keep such an important part of yourself secret, you are a second-class citizen, and it really erodes unit cohesion and troop morale."

She finds that bonding is particularly difficult when her fellow troops talk about their families and relationships and she can't. "I have to live this weird half secret life around them," she says. "They are never going to meet my partner, and I am like this asexual person who has no relationships and nothing to add to conversations."

Derek Sparks, 35, a petty officer first class in the Navy, found that "don't ask, don't tell" fostered a witch-hunt atmosphere that wore down unit cohesion. He participated in the Afghanistan mobilization, and he came out to a commanding officer because he was tired of hiding after 14 years of service. Shortly after that, in early 2002, two soldiers were caught having sex in his office. He maintains he had nothing to do with the incident, but still he was dismissed. "It was perceived that because it was in my office, I allowed it or endorsed it, which was not the case," he says.

Sparks has gone back to school in Seattle to get a degree in information technology; Muller now works as a car salesman in Atlanta. Though he says he was given an honorable discharge, on the bottom left part of his discharge form a note reads HOMOSEXUAL ADMISSION.

Not only did this admission cost him more than half his severance pay--Muller says he qualified for roughly $20,000 based on length and degree of service; he received just $9,000--he says it could also cause him trouble should he ever look for work with the federal government, which he had thought about doing.

"They are discharging gay people who are highly trained and replacing them with people just getting out of basic training and who have been in the military for six months," Muller says. "That does not make us safer."

Name, rank, serious numbers

787

Number of discharges in 2003 under "don't ask, don't tell"

3,000+

Estimated number of gay and lesbian military specialists discharged under "don't ask, don't tell" since 1998

5,000

Number of military reservists called into full-time service to make up for staffing shortfalls during Iraqi war

125,000

Upper estimate of number of gay men and lesbians now serving in the U.S. military

Quittner has written for BusinessWeek and the New York Post.