ABSTRACT
The U.S. military's lesbian/gay exclusion policy is built on intersecting ideas about sexuality, race, and gender.1 The exclusion policy embodies a particular array of race and gender relations and encourages violence against sexual minorities-and, by extension, against any group constructed as "Other" or "undesirable." It provides sexual harassers with a tool for sexual extortion, and it has been applied disproportionately against women in the U.S. armed forces.
