{"id":19495,"date":"2012-09-11T01:52:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T04:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=19495"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:13:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:13:02","slug":"first-post-dadt-study-says-30-of-troops-oppose-homosexual-service-but-no-negative-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/11\/first-post-dadt-study-says-30-of-troops-oppose-homosexual-service-but-no-negative-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"First Post-DADT Study Shows No Negative Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Palm Center, an <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/19\/dadt-general-predicts-wwii-vets-and-mislearned-lessons\/\">activist group<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/26\/chaplains-call-for-troop-protections-over-dadt\/\">advocated for repeal<\/a> of the policy known as &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell,&#8221; has publicized a &#8220;study&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.palmcenter.org\/files\/One Year Out_0.pdf\">PDF<\/a>) it conducted that purports to put to bed claims that open service by homosexuals in the US military will ever be anything other than a &#8220;non-event,&#8221; based on an analysis of the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.palmcenter.org\/press\/dadt\/releases\/first_study_openly_gay_military_service_finds_nonevent_oneyear_mark\">one-year mark<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The first academic study of the effects of repealing \u201cdon&#8217;t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d (DADT) has found that the new policy of open service has had no overall negative impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, recruitment, retention or morale&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the story is being <a href=\"http:\/\/usnews.nbcnews.com\/_news\/2012\/09\/10\/13782623-no-negative-impacts-from-repeal-of-dont-ask-dont-tell-study-reveals\">repeated<\/a> in a couple of places, it seems few have actually <em>read <\/em>the report.\u00a0 For example, the &#8220;academic study&#8221; is based on the following samples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>11 interviews with Generals who opposed repeal<\/li>\n<li>1 interview with a &#8220;public opponent&#8221; of repeal\u00a0 <!--more--><\/li>\n<li>18 interviews with &#8220;scholars and practitioners,&#8221; starting with a Palm Center list<\/li>\n<li>62 US troop interviews (37\u00a0homosexual, 25\u00a0heterosexual)<\/li>\n<li>14\u00a0responses to a <em>Military Times <\/em>advertisement\/survey (4 homosexual, 10 heterosexual)<\/li>\n<li>80 pre-repeal and 120 post-repeal\u00a0surveys of readiness &#8212; all by homosexual troops<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In addition, the Palm Center &#8220;observed&#8221; two military units with homosexual members and two with none to &#8220;identify qualitative differences.&#8221;\u00a0 They also &#8220;reviewed&#8221; 462 media stories from LexisNexis using the search terms &#8220;gay&#8221; and &#8220;dadt.&#8221;\u00a0 Finally, they relied heavily on an unscientific <em>Military Times <\/em>survey conducted in January 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Importantly, with regard to people who are actually <em>in<\/em> the military, the report is predicated on the views of 262 servicemembers.\u00a0 That&#8217;s bad enough, given that there are nearly 3 million servicemembers in the total force.\u00a0 Worse, however, is the caveat that 90 percent of those individuals were homosexual, and 200 were part of an activist organization with a pro-homosexual agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Those hardly sound like the marks of a respectable and reliable study.<\/p>\n<p>There were some other interesting points that failed to consider the full context of the environment surrounding DADT.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the report cites many examples of an &#8220;improvement&#8221; in morale and general readiness.\u00a0 These examples are explicitly based on the elimination of the ambiguously moral policy of <em>not asking <\/em>members if they were <em>breaking the law<\/em>.\u00a0 Homosexual troops naturally felt stress knowing they were breaking the law, and heterosexual troops who didn&#8217;t want to get them in trouble, but found out they were homosexual, likewise experienced stress.<\/p>\n<p>The study fails to note, however, that repealing DADT &#8212; and leaving in place the ban on homosexuals in the military &#8212; would have had the same &#8220;relieving&#8221; effect by eliminating ambiguity on acceptability.\u00a0 It was an arguably indefensible policy of &#8220;not asking&#8221; about illegal conduct that caused much of\u00a0 the negative morale and impact to readiness, not the failure to accept homosexuality.<\/p>\n<p>In another example, the study categorically states that the US military reaching its recruiting and retention goals means &#8220;DADT repeal has not had any measurable impact on recruitment or retention.&#8221;\u00a0 The report fails to mention how it would even go about <em>measuring <\/em>such an impact; it simply assumes if goals were met, DADT was a non-issue.\u00a0 The leap lacks credible academic rigor.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, the survey seems to accept with little question data that support its position, while it minimizes, dismisses, or categorizes opposing data as &#8220;unpersuasive.&#8221; For example, it briefly mentions &#8212; and then never discusses &#8212; the significant fact one of its data sources indicated <strong>30%<\/strong>\u00a0of US troops <em>still <\/em>say homosexuals should be banned from\u00a0military service.\u00a0 When it acknowledges that morale has been negatively affected by DADT repeal, the report characterized it as an apparently acceptable &#8220;minor disappointment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The report also equates silence with &#8220;enlightenment&#8221; or acceptance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A Navy commander said&#8230;one of her classmates brought up \u201ca story on NPR about a [male] Marine officer who was coming out, and taking a male to the Marine Corps ball that year.\u201d Some of her classmates responded \u201cby wondering, \u2018why can\u2019t they just keep that information to themselves?\u2019 But then another classmate asked, \u2018why should they have to hide?\u2019\u201d&#8230;The woman had not acknowledged her sexual orientation prior to this discussion, and many of her classmates were shocked. The commander said that, \u201cIt was a conversation stopper. Those guys hadn\u2019t thought of it that way before. I also think they didn\u2019t realize they knew someone who was actually gay.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is a verifiable fact that her announcement of her homosexuality was a &#8220;conversation stopper.&#8221;\u00a0 It is speculation to assume &#8212; and academically dishonest to imply &#8212; it was the sudden, enlightened realization they knew someone who was &#8220;actually gay.&#8221;\u00a0 Yet the theme is repeated throughout the report, implying that the <em>silencing of criticisms<\/em> of homosexuality was a positive indicator of &#8220;no impact.&#8221;\u00a0 It failed to adequately consider other reasons for the silence of those who opposed homosexuality &#8212; like a command environment or culture that had officially <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/12\/general-mixon-retires-reiterates-stance-on-dadt\/\">scolded those who opposed homosexuality<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0The report spent one paragraph discussing the &#8220;gag rule&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/03\/us-military-censoring-opposition-to-homosexuality\/\">potentially imposed<\/a> on troops who oppose homosexuality &#8212; and then summarily dismissed it.<\/p>\n<p>The study claims to report on the &#8220;one year mark&#8221; post-DADT repeal, yet it relies on a January 2012 <em>Military Times <\/em>survey, spring recruiting and retention data, and interviews conducted no later than May 2012.\u00a0 At best, it could be used to describe the period of perhaps\u00a03 to 7 months, yet it is titled &#8220;One Year Out&#8230;&#8221;\u00a0 It acknowledges some have said it is too early to draw such dramatic conclusions &#8212; and it then dismisses those concerns based primarily on the unscientific assumption that if something bad was going to happen, it would have happened by now.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the report does include a page of 41 signatories attesting to the &#8220;quality of research&#8221; in the study, all of whom were or are instructors at military academies or institutions.\u00a0 Most of the names are fairly unknown, though a few are interesting.\u00a0 There are prior connections to the Palm Center (ie, Gen Tom Kolditz), and the lead associate editors of LtCol Jim Parco&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/15\/af-diversity-tome-quotes-disagreement-on-religion\/\">Attitudes Aren&#8217;t Free<\/a> <\/em>are also reviewers of this Palm Center study. Parco was also one of the &#8220;scholars and practitioners&#8221; interviewed for this Palm Center study, and two authors of the study &#8212;\u00a0Aaron Belkin and Nathaniel Frank &#8212;\u00a0also co-authored a DADT repeal article in Parco&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Attitudes Aren&#8217;t Free<\/em>.\u00a0 Two other notables include Dr. <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/07\/mrff-allies-within-usafa-continue-pr-push\/\">Barry Fagin<\/a> and retired LtCol <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/17\/usafa-faculty-underwriting-attacks-on-usafa\/\">Edith Disler<\/a>.\u00a0 Both, along with Parco, are allies of Michael Weinstein.\u00a0 Disler, who is homosexual, retired from the US Air Force Academy not long after reportedly being sanctioned for inviting homosexuals to speak to her class.\u00a0 The Palm Center issued her press release, and she went on to serve on the advisory board of Michael Weinstein&#8217;s &#8220;charity&#8221; for a time.<\/p>\n<p>It seems some of those who &#8220;endorsed the quality of research&#8221; conducted by the Palm Center were far from independent, either in ideological activism or even\u00a0prior alliances. \u00a0There are interesting overlaps in the advocates for this cause.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the &#8220;first academic study&#8221; on the post-DADT era is a far cry from being either academic or a study.\u00a0 A review of its construct and analysis makes it appear to be a grasp for headlines and a positive portrayal of an agenda-based topic rather than an academic review of a controversial subject.<\/p>\n<p>The report dismissed some timeliness concerns by saying critics of repeal had &#8220;implied&#8221; immediate and dire consequences, and the absence of those consequences validated their study.\u00a0 As with other facts in the report, that is a mischaracterization.\u00a0 It was a melodramatic assumption by proponents of repeal that critics thought the world would end the day after repeal.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it was obvious to the casual observer, and occasionally plainly stated, that only\u00a0time would tell the impact on the US military of changing its moral landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Palm Center, an activist group that advocated for repeal of the policy known as &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell,&#8221; has publicized a &#8220;study&#8221; (PDF) it conducted that purports to put to bed claims that open service by homosexuals in the US military will ever be anything other than a &#8220;non-event,&#8221; based on an analysis of the &#8220;one-year mark.&#8221; The first [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1789,1445,219,1154,442,3568,85,2,5218,7,3569,1788,1176,3567],"class_list":["post-19495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-aaron-belkin","tag-barry-fagin","tag-dadt","tag-edith-disler","tag-homosexual","tag-jim-parco","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-nathaniel-frank","tag-palm-center","tag-report","tag-tom-kolditz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}