The military ban and the ROTC: a study in closeting

This article examines reasons for university involvement in protesting ROTC policies discriminatory toward lesbians and gay men. The formal exclusion of lesbians and gay men from the military permits not only the abuses in selective enforcement of the policy and considerable economic costs to maintain it, but also contributes to the perpetuation of the closet. Closeting is not a phenomenon chosen by lesbians and gay men for reasons of their own, and it rewards deceit, penalizes honesty, blames lesbians and gays for the mistrust of others, and effects a psychological division ("doubling") of individual identity and corrupts individual responsibility. For these reasons, university educators, as committed to the advance of truth, have an obligation to protest ROTC compliance with discriminatory policies.