ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief overview of the current framing of the policy debate about gays in the military with specific focus on the logical structure of the arguments. It looks at the way the debate that is framed and the discourses largely absent from debate that occasionally burst through and reveal another layer of meaning. The chapter explores the social construction of gender and sexuality and its relation to the military as an institution and at the central, if often unarticulated, role this relation plays in the debate. Civil rights for gays in the military would undermine combat readiness, military effectiveness, and, by extension, national security itself. Public support for the military is largely based in the perception that the military should defend and uphold civil society’s values. The assertion that gays in the military would degrade morale, discipline, and unit cohesion is an assumption based on expectations rooted in stereotypes and social attitudes.
