Gays in the U.S. Military Are Now Protected Against ‘Witch Hunts’

• Defense Secretary Ashton Carter speaks as a sign language interpreter translates his remarks during a gay-pride event at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Such hunts were standard not so long ago

Some labels never lose their sting inside the U.S. military. “Communist,” for example, remains potent, even if the U.S. imports more from Red China than any other country. “Gay” used to be one too, or at least it was when it “homosexual” was the commonly used term. But Tuesday’s announcement by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that gays and lesbians will be protected from discrimination by the Pentagon’s equal-opportunity policy makes clear the Pentagon’s Old Guard has lost the culture war.

Talk about change: less than a generation ago, troops were investigated if commanders suspected they were gay. In fact, superiors often launched what were called “witch hunts” to find gay troops and boot them out of the service. But under the newly expanded equal-opportunity policy, any commander who orders such a hunt will be investigated, instead.

“Discrimination of any kind has no place in America’s armed forces,” Carter said. He announced the change at a Pentagon ceremony celebrating June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month.” His action adds sexual orientation to race, creed, color, national origin and gender as a protected characteristic that cannot be considered in hiring, firing and promotions. It comes as Carter weighs recommending his openly gay chief of staff, former Air Force undersecretary Eric Fanning, to replace outgoing Army Secretary John McHugh.

It’s hard to overstate how far this debate has come since presidential candidate Bill Clinton declared in 1992 that openly gay men and women should be permitted to serve in uniform. Following Clinton’s election, his proposal generated sharp opposition from U.S. military leaders, including Army General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They were reflecting the views of many of their troops: “At the Marine Corps ball,” one Marine wondered, “will we see homosexual couples dancing and kissing?”

Congress held a hearing in the Navy town of Norfolk, Va., in May 1993 to gauge sailor sentiment toward Clinton’s idea. “There’s going to be a lot of men overboard” because heterosexuals won’t tolerate gays working alongside them aboard ship,warned a sailor from the carrierUSS John F. Kennedy. Added a female sailor aboard a sub tender: “There’s going to be a lot of problems—a lot of personal injuries, if not deaths—against gays and lesbians.”

• The scare tactics worked for a nation uncertain about the wisdom of integrating gays into a tradition-bound culture like the U.S. military (the fact that it wasn’t an issue for other nations’ militaries never seemed to get much traction inside the Pentagon). Facing strong opposition from both the military and the Congress, Clinton compromised. “The new policy, dubbed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,’ bars the Pentagon from asking service members if they are gay, but forces gays to hide their sexual orientation or face expulsion,” the Philadelphia