Military disorder.

• Position: Lifting the gay ban - Editorial

Never mind national security. The issue that most worries top military officers these days appears to be their soldiers' privacy.

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his aides are considering whether they ought to build separate barracks and showers for lesbian and gay soldiers, or bar them from going into combat, "to respect the privacy of heterosexuals who feel uncomfortable sleeping in cramped bunk areas or showering with homosexuals," The New York Times reports.

"If you have a stateside circumstance where people's privacy can be respected, that's one thing," said a worried official who declined to be identified. "But on a field deployment overseas, that situation changes. What do you do?"

The military's deep concern for soldiers' privacy is out of character, to say the least. Where was it last year, for instance, at the Navy's annual Tailhook convention? Or during the Persian Gulf war, when the Army suppressed reports that enlisted women were sexually assaulted by their superior officers? Or, for that matter, when the Marine Corps conducted a witch hunt against suspected lesbians during the late 1980s - investigating personal phone calls, "overly friendly" hugs, and gifts of flowers, prosecuting eleven women for homosexuality, and purging them from its ranks?

But that was then. Today, as Pentagon officials brood over the prospect of lifting the military's ban on lesbians and gays, military leaders are plagued by visions of straight, male soldiers feeling uncomfortable when they get undressed, or worse, being sexually harassed.

The whole sorry spectacle of high-ranking officers wringing their hands and squirming at the thought of being ogled in the shower would be delightfully ironic (especially so soon after the Tailhook scandal) - if the implications for lesbians and gays were not so serious.

The uproar over the issue of homosexuality in the military shows how far lesbians and gays still have to go in their struggle for basic civil rights. What other group of people employed by the Government could be treated as if they needed to be quarantined because co-workers find their mere presence offensive?

To make matters worse, the religious Right has made persecuting homosexuals its central mission, and is distributing defamatory propaganda and promoting anti-gay legislation across the nation (see "Cruel Crusade," Page 18). To a frightening degree, Congress, the media, and the American public are willing to give serious consideration to such...