Currently, the United States military is having serious problems recruiting and retaining enough personnel. Especially with two wars going on, it seems abysmally stupid for the military to discard trained personnel without a very good reason. And yet, there are still many people discharged every year for being homosexual. This strikes me as a really bad idea, especially since I see nothing wrong with homosexuality.
There is, of course, the don't-ask-don't-tell policy. Which is better than outright witch hunts, but still decidedly suboptimal. First, it allows for vast inconsistency--someone with a big problem with homosexuality, or even just someone with a personal grudge, can probably manage to maneuver someone into "outing" themselves; while someone inclined to like their homosexual subordinate would probably ignore anything much short of a press release. Second, it rewards liars and punishes the honest--I'd be more inclined to trust someone openly living with a same-sex partner than someone nominally heterosexual who finds same-sex partners on the sly, but the first would be kicked out and the second would not be. Third, it makes any serving homosexuals vulnerable to blackmail--if you can get kicked out of the service for revealing your homosexuality, anyone who learns about it potentially has significant leverage.
Now, there is something to be said for the idea that combat is not the best place for social experiments. Other countries' militaries don't have a problem with allowing homosexuals to serve, but I understand that the core of the US military tends to come from socially conservative areas and groups. And I can see where adding potential sexual tension to the mix might possibly have a detrimental effect on unit cohesion (and related group social dynamics--for the purposes of this article, I'll refer to them all as unit cohesion, so I don't have a long explanation every time). But the only halfway reasonable arguments I have heard against allowing homosexuals to serve in the military involve this possible effect on unit cohesion.
So, the obvious first step is to allow homosexuals to serve in any post that can, at present, be held by someone of either gender--that is, non-combat positions. Any post held by both men and women is, presumably, not substantially adversely affected by any potential sexual interest. And I fail to see how the sexual preference of people not present in a combat situation could have any significant effect on unit cohesion in combat. There may need to be a few new fraternization rules in place, for situations where previously the single-gender nature of things like basic training precluded the possibility of sexual situations between heterosexuals, but that would be fairly easy to manage.
Women in combat is another interesting issue. The arguments here are, I must admit, somewhat more valid. Aside from the potentially complex social dynamics of mixed-gender groups, there are real physical differences between men and women, in terms of upper-body strength and the like. There are also some psychological differences which may have an effect on combat ability. However, almost all of these differences are averages rather than absolutes. This means that fewer women than men are physically and psychologically suited to combat, but it does not mean that all or almost all women are unsuitable.
Accepting for the moment the prior premise that sexual interest adversely affects unit cohesion, there's still an obvious solution: female-only combat units. Allow any female volunteer who can pass the physical tests--equivalent, if not necessarily strictly identical, to the limits for men in combat--to join a combat unit, as long as space is available in one of the female-only units. This would allow women in the military to get the combat experience that can be so helpful for promotions and the like, and it would give the United States armed forces greater flexibility in using its personnel, which might significantly ease the pressure on the (male) combat units currently shouldering so much of the burden in Iraq, Afghanistan, and whatever trouble spots flare up in the future.
Of course, to my mind, these are at best half measures based on overly conservative assumptions. I suspect that, with a modicum of awareness and flexibility, mixed-gender combat units, and/or units containing homosexuals, would eventually prove to have no worse effect on unit cohesion than the first mixed-race units did. As long as there are appropriately-enforced fraternization rules, and unit commanders have some authority to split up problem pairs or eject problem individuals from combat units, I anticipate no significant problems.
