I’ve now gone through the recent University of California study of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which estimates the costs of the policy in its first ten years (1994 through 2003). The commission that produced the report includes several experts in military and national security policy. Notable among them are former Secretary of Defense William Perry under President Clinton; former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb under President Reagan; retired Admiral John D. Hutson; Professors Donald Campbell and Kathleen Campbell of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and Professors Frank Barrett and Mark Eitelberg of the Naval Postgraduate School. Experts in economics, cost accounting, management control systems, and other fields assisted the commission. The Williams Project of the UCLA Law School, which studies gay legal issues and works for gay equality, loaned out the time of Dr. Gary Gates, who provided extensive statistical and conceptual analysis as Senior Project Consultant. While some of those who produced the study may personally oppose DADT, the study itself cannot be dismissed on this basis. It is a serious effort to weigh some of the financial consequences of DADT.
The report breaks down the financial cost of firing service members for homosexuality under DADT into four discrete categories: (1) recruiting costs for enlisted service members; (2) training costs for enlisted service members; (3) training costs for officers; and (4) separation travel costs. Let’s take a look at each of these:
(1) Recruiting costs for enlisted service members fired for homosexuality (1994-2003): $79.2 million
The military spends a lot of money to recruit. Some of this money is spent to recruit service members who are eventually fired for homosexuality. In a February 2005 report tellingly entitled “Financial Costs and Loss of Critical Skills Due to DOD’s Homosexual Conduct Policy Cannot Be Completely Estimated,” the congressional General Accounting Office estimated these costs attributable to DADT at $95.4 million.
The UC Commission believes this overstates the actual cost:
The critical value for estimating this cost, we would argue, is not how much the military spent to replace service members fired for homosexuality. Rather, the appropriate consideration is how much value the military lost as a result of each homosexual discharge. For example, in [an] extreme hypothetical situation [], in which the service member served for almost 30 years in uniform prior to discharge, we suggest that the military barely lost any value from the premature discharge for homosexuality.
To correct this type of error, the UC Commission took the GAO cost for enlisted recruiting of DADT-discharged service members ($95.4 million) as a lodestar and subtracted from that an estimate of the value of this cost the military recovered from the service members’ time in service, as follows:
To determine the military’s monthly return on investment, we divided the average cost of recruiting each enlisted service member ($10,193) by the number of months during which the military could have recovered its investment in that individual’s recruiting. . . . For each enlisted service member, we credited the military with a monthly return on its investment in recruiting for each month served, except for those months spent in initial and mid-career training. The cost of enlisted recruiting was determined by GAO to be $95,393,000. Total recovery on investment . . . is calculated as $16,113,715. The total spent on recruiting, $95,393,000, minus the recovery on investment, $16,113,715 yields a total of $79,279,285.
(2) Training costs for enlisted service members fired for homosexuality (1994-2003): $252.3 million
Once the military recruits a person for service, it invests even more heavily in both basic and initial skills training. The GAO estimated the cost of training recruits fired for homosexuality to be $95.1 million.
This is almost certainly a large underestimate of the cost of training these recruits, for a couple of reasons. First, the GAO number does not reflect training costs for Marines discharged for homosexuality (since the Marines apparently did not provide GAO with training estimates). Second, even the GAO’s training cost figures for the other services are substantially lower than the GAO’s own previous estimates of training costs and estimates available in other public sources. The UC Commission corrected the GAO figures by relying on the Defense Department’s and GAO’s own previous figures for both basic and initial skills training for each of the branches. After that, the UC Commission again credited the military for recovering at least a part of this cost through the member’s service before discharge. Here’s the calculation:
Spending on enlisted training, prior to any recovery of costs, is $331,866,779. Total recovery on investment . . . is calculated as $79,492,728. The total spent on training, $331,866,779, minus the recovery on investment, $79,492,728, yields a total cost to the military of $252,374,051.
(3) Training costs for officers (1994-2003): $17.7 million
The GAO report did not factor the cost of training officers into its report. In the period 1994-2003, 137 officers were discharged for homosexuality.
To quantify the losses associated with firing officers for homosexuality, we estimated the cost of training to commission as well as post-commission training. Then, as was the case with our estimates of recruiting and enlisted training costs, we reduced our estimates by crediting the military with any recovered value on its initial investment in officer training for those officers who served after the completion of their training. Unlike enlisted service members, however, in the case of officers we did not include mid-career training costs in our estimates.
The UC Commission then estimated the cost of training for officers who go through one of five different routes: service academies (like West Point), ROTC, Officer Candidate School, direct appointment, and other paths. Since the UC Commission was unable to get cost estimates for the latter two, it assumed these costs to be zero. This approach yielded these numbers:
Spending on officer training, prior to any recovery of costs, is $27,553,701, of which $15,752,353 is for pre-commission training, and $11,801,348 is for post-commission training. Total recovery on investment . . . is calculated as $9,781,631. The total spent on training, $27,553,701, minus the recovery on investment, $9,781,631, yields a total loss to the military of $17,772,070.
(4) Separation travel costs (1994-2003): $14.3 million
Recruiting and training costs are front-end: they occur at the beginning of a military career. There are also costs associated with separation from the military, the back-end of service. These “out-processing” costs are numerous and are also investments the military must make when it discharges a member. One such cost is travel expense. Using the Army’s own lower-range estimates for such travel costs, and deducting for recovery of costs through time served, the UC Commission found as follows:
Spending on enlisted and officer separation travel, prior to any recovery of costs, is $16,633,308 and $638,381, respectively. Total recovery on investment . . . is calculated as $2,926,816. The total spent on separation travel, $17,271,689 minus the recovery on investment, $2,926,816, yields a total of $14,344,873.
Putting all these numbers together, we arrive at a total cost of $363, 770, 279 to implement DADT during its first ten years.
How accurate is this number? I am not an economist and can’t vouch for the inputs the UC Commission used to calculate costs. Several factors, however, suggest that the UC Commission estimate – while an improvement over the GAO figure – is still a substantial underestimate of the financial cost of expelling gay service members. The Commission itself points to five ways in which its analysis may underestimate costs:
First, we were unable to obtain reliable data for some costs that were omitted from GAO’s original report. For example, we were unable to obtain reliable data for the costs of discharge review boards, security clearances, out-processing costs, investigations into service members’ sexual orientation, re-enlistment bonuses, and officer recruiting.
...
Second, as noted above, our use of the training costs for a surface warfare officer as a proxy for the cost of training all officers reflects a conservative assumption that probably reduced our overall cost estimate. The cost to train a surface warfare officer is $92,924, while the cost to train one jet pilot (T-45 line) is $1,439,754. The list of officers fired for homosexuality includes physicians, pilots, dentists, and other individuals with highly technical training.
Third, many gays and lesbians do not re-enlist after fulfilling their service obligations because they are unwilling to continue to conceal their identity. According to a new survey of 445 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered veterans, 19.6 percent of respondents left the armed forces “voluntarily because they could not be open about being LGBT while in the military.” . . . [T]he military may be losing some of its investment in recruiting and training individuals who would remain in uniform if the ban were repealed.
Fourth, we assumed that the benefits of a service member to the Defense Department accrue evenly over the cost recovery period. . . . This is a conservative assumption given that, as is the case in most industries, service members’ value to the military increases with experience.
...
Fifth, we did not include the costs of marriage benefits for gays and lesbians who get married to opposite-sex individuals to avoid military scrutiny of their sexual orientation, and who then file claims for military benefits for their spouses. According to the new survey of 445 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered veterans mentioned above, 18 percent of respondents (80 individuals) got married to avoid military scrutiny of their sexual orientation.
Of these, the first (additional separation costs) and the third (premature loss of non-discharged gay personnel) seem most likely to add considerably to the real cost of DADT.
There are a few more reasons, in addition to these, that the UC Commission may be underestimating the cost of DADT. At just about every turn, the Commission used very conservative estimates of costs. For example, the UC Commission used a low-ball estimate of the number of service members fired for homosexuality in the ten-year period, putting the number at 9,359 enlisted, active-duty members. But this number, as the Commission notes (fn. 14), does not include some members of the Coast Guard and reserve forces. Including them would add about another 300 discharged under DADT. Further, the UC Commission’s estimate of training costs, though more reasonable than GAO’s, may still be too low. The Commission cites a “senior level military operations research analyst” who estimates that actual training costs are much higher than even the Commission accepts as the basis for its calculations (p. 13). Since enlisted training costs are by far the largest fraction of the overall cost of DADT, under the UC Commission’s own calculation, even small error in per capita costs could have a big effect on the final calculation.
On the other hand, there are a few ways in which the UC Commission may have overestimated the total cost of DADT. First, as the Commission acknowledges, it did not calculate the cost of paying same-sex partner benefits if the ban is lifted. Experience in other countries so far shows this cost is very low. Potentially more significantly, the UC Commission does not attempt to calculate the cost of recruiting, training, and retaining service members who might disdain military service if the ban is lifted. Nobody can know what this cost would be, though it would surely be greater than zero. I doubt it would be a large cost, since open homosexuals would be such a tiny portion of the military services, and whatever the initial cost it could be expected to dwindle as military culture adjusted. The experience of other countries does not indicate any recruitment and retention difficulties attributable to allowing service by openly gay service members. But perhaps the experience of other countries cannot be fully extrapolated to the United States. Finally, as a reader and former service member helpfully noted in a private message to me, the Commission assumes that gay service members discharged under DADT would have served just as long as straight service members if not for DADT. The assumption seems reasonable, and the Commission makes no attempt to defend it. But I do not really know. The difference between the expected length of service and actual service forms the basis for some of the Commission’s cost estimates. If, contrary to the Commission’s assumption, service members expelled under DADT would, on average, serve shorter periods of time than their peers even in the absence of DADT then the “loss” the military suffers because of early discharge would be correspondingly smaller.
Finally, whatever the accuracy of the numbers in the UC Commission report, the financial costs alone do not resolve the debate over DADT, just as financial cost does not resolve a debate over any policy that might be worthwhile. The military exists to deter wars and, when that fails, to win them. If allowing homosexuals to serve openly would likely hinder that mission to any substantial degree, then the financial cost of expelling them would have to be just one more item in the Defense Department’s budget. Nor do “financial costs” alone measure all the costs – in broken careers, broken lives, broken families, in the dignitary loss to gay Americans in general and to those who want to serve their country with integrity in particular – of having a policy that expels American service members simply because we learn they’re gay.
But we cannot have a debate over the overall costs and benefits of DADT without at least a reasonable baseline estimate of the financial costs. For that reason, the UC Commission has made what appears to be a useful and important contribution. Military policy leaders in Congress should take a close look at the study, since Congress is the body that must repeal or amend DADT.
I am interested in readers’ views on the specifics of this study. I am especially interested in hearing from readers who have expertise in economics, accounting, and military-cost analysis.
But we cannot have a debate over the overall costs and benefits of DADT without at least a reasonable baseline estimate of the financial costs of overturning DADT. Dale, it's disingenuous to assume that it's all costs for maintaining while implying that it would be free to eliminating DADT! You're only showing the GROSS cost of DADT. What is the NET cost over the alternative you propose? I cannot take these figures seriously without a serious projection of the costs that the armed forces would incur by eliminating DADT, not just the take on what the armed forces would save.
How much harder would it be to get people into the military (the majority of whom are from conservative southern backgrounds) without DADT? What would be the ongoing costs of eliminating DADT — How much more advertising would have to occur and how much higher would pay/benefits (i.e., demand for services) have to go to keep supply of both officers and enlistedmen at the current level? What would be the transaction costs of moving from DADT to an "open scheme"? What would be the agency costs of monitoring for discrimination against open homosexuals in the armed forces?
Even if those numbers aren't dispositive, or even if they're more than the costs of maintaining DADT on average, you or somebody else needs to put them on the table.
You want to convince people, Dale? Give them ALL the numbers.
Or the President could just overturn the statute pursuant to his inherent authority.
GMU person,
Dale, it's disingenuous to assume that it's all costs for maintaining while implying that it would be free to eliminating DADT!
Maybe I misread the post, but I thought Dale only professed to be citing a cost study. There's nothing disingenuous about it, particularly when he makes his focus on cost quite explicit:
But we cannot have a debate over the overall costs and benefits of DADT without at least a reasonable baseline estimate of the financial costs.
I think it is Dale's point that it's nice to finally have some numbers, and he's looking for methodological problems in their computation.
It would be a shame to put these costs at the feet of the victims as somehow mitigating the process, but progress has costs and this is one of them. The Civil Rights Act would have been toothless if we simply passed the laws and gave no money for prosecution of those who violated them. The same applies here.
2. The cost savings of good order and discipline are nearly impossible to quantify. Though during my time on exchange with the Canadian Forces I saw little evidence that out homosexuals caused much problem.
3. The larger point is that it is impossible to quantify the social cost of governmental discrimination. If we were discussing a racist (or don't ask, don't talk about your religious faith) policy within the US military, would we care at all about the cost of dismissal or the cost savings of discipline?
In any case, as I said, we can all have paranoid rants. I believe the costs I suggested would be far more real than the costs projected for the lost recruitment opportunities of homophobic Southerners.
On the other hand, I've seen firsthand a good number of gay young people who were interested in joining the military, but decided against doing so because of the policy.
With regard to Buck's point, the cost of prosecuting those who harass suspected or actual homosexuals shouldn't figure into a cost-benefit analysis of DADT repeal, since such people should be prosecuted whether or not the policy changes, as such harassment is contrary to military policy today.
Second, you have got to be getting desperate if you count 15th-degree-of-seperation issues like paying marriage benefits to gays as a cost of DADT. Even assuming you can possibly measure a presumably secret activity with any accuracy, all one would have to do to avoid this cost is to properly enforce the "Don't ask" portion of the policy... which would mean that weather the person is married or not is totally irrelevant to weather the person leaves.
Isn't this exactly what Dale's post says?
In any event, it's likely that change can come from either direction, at least in theory, since it's hard to imagine that if the military wanted DADT repealed Congress would refuse to go along.
We can certainly agree on that, but, as I said, we are dealing with realities of the situation, not suppositions. Such harassment exists already, as those who are perceived as weaker or insufficiently manly are often mocked as being gay. "Mocking" is being polite--the actual reactions are much worse. These rarely seem to be prosecuted.
With a repeal of DADT, such prosecutions would become a necessity.
Waxx,
While this may be true of some servicemen, I have never seen numbers that justify the term "many". I know a few of ROTC people who bailed out after one year under this provision, but they really were gay and used the ROTC scholarship to get at least one year of education subsidized. But doing so after the first year for officers and officer candidates is hardly a good idea. And let's not forget that an admission can result in prosecution and not merely a discharge.
If you can offer some statistics that suggests that this is such a common "method" of quitting the military, please make them available. Color me skeptical.
In case you overlooked it, DC's post says this:
Military policy leaders in Congress should take a close look at the study, since CONGRESS is the body that must repeal or amend DADT. (my emphasis)
Congress doesn't enact statutes in a vacuum. Whether or not DADT is a cost effective way to spend money is one aspect of whether it's a good policy, and therefore a factor for Congress to consider in deciding whether to change the policy.
And the point about southern homophobes avoiding military service if gay people are allowed into the military makes no sense. They're allowed in now and everyone knows that, even southern homophones.
I'm always amazed at how little respect people have for the men and women who risk their lives to serve and protect this country. Do you honestly think that the patriotism that inspires these people is going to evaporate if gay people are also allowed to serve their country? I know many conservative former members of the military who would be deeply offended by your thoughts about them.
Buck seems to think that the military is largely made up of Southerners and homophobes, both of which I dispute. The military is largely made up of patriotic people and poor people, which groups are not more or less likely to hate gays and lesbians than other groups. But even if we accept your theory that bigotry runs deeper among people who join the military, you have to remember that the military is recruiting almost exclusively people under the age of 25. The most reliable demographic predictor of tolerance of homosexuality is not geography, religion, wealth, education, etc. It is age. Young people are WAY more likely to just not care who you have sex with than the middle aged good ol' boys you may be associating with Southern bigotry.
Finally, the military will not be perceived as "gay" when gay people are allowed to serve any more than the military was perceived as "black" when it was racially integrated. In fact, the opposite is true. Organizations like the military or the Boy Scouts can't escape the perception of sexual obsession when they engage in adamant discrimination against gays. If you were to ask someone to give the first word they think of when they hear "Boy Scouts" I would hazard that "gay" would be in the top five. Once those policies are repealed, the "gay" perception will disappear.
At that time, the JAG told me that about 50% of the individuals from our base who attempted to get out under DA/DT were turned down because the investigation revealed they were not actually gay, but were just trying to get out early with an honorable discharge. Most were first-term airmen who just didn't like what they'd gotten themselves into, and almost all were female.
The JAG also estimated that of the remaining 50% who actually did get discharged due to DA/DT, at least 25-30% were heterosexuals who beat the investigation. In most of those cases, there was evidence opposing the homosexuality claims, but not enough to justify turning them down.
Because of this experience, I take any studies of DA/DT with a grain of salt, because there's no way to know what the true measure of homosexual discharges is.
I'm in favor of doing away with DA/DT, BTW.
If we change the thresholds for these things maybe we would save more money than the loss due to homosexuals.
That is if we really just want to save more money and are not trying an indirect approach to get what we want.
I'm curious . . . how did you "investigate?" What counted as "gay enough" to warrant a discharge? Thoughts? Actions? Bi-sexuality? Did you guys have a poster of the Kinsey scale on the wall?
I'm not (just) being sarcastic, I am actually curious how it worked.
An economic basis for this type of decision making is basically useless. What is the cost of pregnancy to DOD? Should this be used to make policy concerning females in the service?
By the way, if I move to either the eastern or western termination of flyover country, will I become more enlightened, intelligent, tolerant and better educated? Or would the sterotype would just follow me?
MD south of flyover country
As I understood the process, though, the JAG would appoint an investigating officer. This officer would normally be a mid-level officer (Capt/Maj/Lt Col). The investigating officer would interview the airman, co-workers, friends, barracks-mates, etc.
The barracks-mates interview usually turned out to be the most informative. As anyone who has ever lived in one can attest, there are few secrets. In the few instances that I knew first-hand why an airman was declined, it was because the investigators found out that the airmen in question had boyfriends/girlfriends of the opposite sex (and none of the same sex) or had told someone of the scam.
I realized I failed to completely address your questions. As I said above, I wasn't involved at the investigation level, so I can't speak with certainty, but...
IIRC, under DA/DT, either admitting homosexuality or practicing is sufficient. However, in practice, I think some conduct is required. I think that when the policy was first introduced, admitting homosexuality was sufficient, but too many troops quickly realized that admitting homosexuality was an easy, quick honorable discharge. That's why I think the investigators look for some level of actual conduct, even if it's something short of a full-blown sexual encouter with the same sex.
That or they put them in a room full of magazines. If anyone picks up the Entertainment Weekly, they know what to do.
Hovesp Joseph is right, this entire discussion of "homophobic Southerners" from those who oppose allowing gays to serve reeks of both an insult to the men and women of the armed services (who love their country more than they love their biases) and also a certain kind of elitism about what the minds of certain types of people are able to udnerstand, ignore and comprehend.... oh wait, I forgot, this insult to southerners is coming from the right, so it's OK.
DADT is not only offensive, but it's an expensive program (although, relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things -- if we cancelled it, we could only fund 12 hours of Iraq war!). It's too bad the president cannot get the log out of his eye on this one.
The other day my friend says to me:
"Do you know what the gayest society in history was?"
"Sparta?" I replied in jest. But he took it seriously and started discoursing. I'm not totally sure (to say the least) that we knew what we were talking about, but it is an interesting question.
I would be surprised, however, if members of the phalanx were coming out to each other in the ranks. If there was lots of gay sex in the Sparatan military (about which I do not even know) then I can imagine that it took a less friendly form. But I seriously do think that all this is interesting and would like to hear from someone who knows about it.
Recruiting costs for enlisted service members fired for homosexuality: 79.2 million dollars.
Training costs for enlisted service members fired for homosexuality: 252.3 million dollars.
The cost of firing at least 54 Arabic homosexual translators in light of the fact that the 9/11 commission determined that a key deficiency of the U.S. intelligence structure was that it “lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic . . . resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts”: priceless.
The point Bobbie implicitly raises seems worthy of further study, however -- to what extent does DADT deprive the military of the ability to fill certain specialties -- that would be a cost potentially much greater than the financials.
You are barking up the wrong tree here. I actually borrowed the "Southern homophobe" line from someone else who used it earlier and don't share in the sentiment. Perhaps you missed the sarcasm.
Yet, the anti-(perceived)-homosexual harassment is reality--at least, among the men. This has nothing to do with regional origins, but it does have something to do with cultural backgrounds, especially of enlisted men.
Jed,
You have a partial response to my demand for data on the subject. What you have is a start, but it is still anecdotal. A legitimate study would likely find an interesting phenomenon--both the legitimate and the false claims would end up in both accepted and rejected categories. The problem here is essentially the same as with your data--the conclusions are based on hearsay. And that leads back to my other comment--many homosexuals in the service will protect their identity by playing along with the heterosexual games. We see this quite often under less stressful circumstances (plenty of closet cases out there), but the pressure increases in the military.
One thing that your aside comment suggests is that indeed there is more of a stigma attached to homosexuality among men (you noted that most cases of "false" claims were women--perhaps I misunderstood?).
With regards to recruiting costs, I'm not sure I by this as being a cost of DADT.
Presumably, the military is going to spend money on recruiting anyway, so from an economic standpoint this is a sunk cost, unless the military spends money recruiting on an individual basis.
Are they simply adding up the cost of things like TV advertisements and multiplying by the ratio of discharged gays to the entire military?
Kieran Jadiker-Smith,
Provide the kind of funding that University Advocacy groups did for the UC study, and I think people could take you up on that challenge.
"On the other hand, I've seen firsthand a good number of gay young people who were interested in joining the military, but decided against doing so because of the policy."
I would also add that anecdotes do not equal evidence. It tends to be hard to weigh your personal experiences again those of another who might say where they were otherwise willing to, they would now refuse to serve if DADT were repealed.
Does this pool include gays who were caught violating military protocol, and that violation happened to be incidental to their orientation?
The military doesn't allow men and women to fraternize while on duty, so presumably the same would apply to gays even if DADT were repealed.
If they were included, and if it were a high percentage of those discharged, that would tend to overstate the overall cost estimates.
Given that gays cannot serve and will be dismissed if they are deemed openly gay, do you really think that they are going around trying to shag every other man on the base?
These men want to serve, are taking a risk to do so, and covering up part of their identity to do so. Let's offer a little respect to the gay members of the military here and not pretend they are such hedonists that they cannot follow protocol.
Sorry to break it to you, but we don't have a secret handshake to ease the determination of who else we can bunk with. In my fraternity in college, it sure would have been nice if we did!
It would seem the amount of military-military fraternization events would be quite low. When I was living 90 miles from a military facility and visiting the local gay bars, there were always a couple of military guys there, they knew each other, sure, but they did not know or have anything to do with each other in that way. They love their country too much to do something so stupid as make a pass at someone while on duty.
For those gays who served in the military longer than 5.9 years, and then were discharged, did the study treat that as a "net return" on their investment on the individual?
Presumably, the longer a person serves, the greater the value they are to the military, while at the same time, the lower their marginal cost.
That would suggest that for anyone discharged beyond the expected 5.9 years, they should be counted as a net gain, and hence, deduct from the total cost of DADT.
I've skimmed through the report and cannot tell for certain if they do this, but it does not look like they do. The report seems to assume that after 5.9 years, servicemen cost exactly as much as they return to the military. That may or may not be a valid assumption.
Your protestations notwithstanding, I'm hard pressed to believe that all members of the military, gay or not, are models of perfect self-control.
Are you suggesting that gays are not subject to the same desires and mistakes that straights are?
I certainly wasn't suggesting the same for gays.
Mr. Carpenter asked for dispassionate reviews of the report so can we refrain from posts declaring indignation?
I suppose the first question is what would happen with these people if not for DA/DT. Perhaps some of them would find their way to a discharge anyway. But surely there is at least some marginal effect on discharges among straight people because of the addition of this easy out. And it seems to me that is a cost of the policy, regardless of whether or not it is actually gay people who are getting discharged.
And the second question would be the enforcement costs. Jed paints a picture of a relatively costly process that is needed to keep too many straight people from using DA/DT as an easy out (which, again, is only somewhat successful). So, in addition to the costs of additional straight people getting discharged, we have to add the cost of making sure that not even more straight people get discharges.
In short, it seems clear to me that the possibility of straight people pretending to be gay increases, not deceases, the total cost of DA/DT. Whether these studies have appropriately measured that cost is still a different matter, of course, but with respect to this particular problem it does not seem obvious to me that the studies have overestimated the costs simply because not all the people getting discharged are actually gay.
Taimy, I'd argue gay and lesbian soldiers, since they not only would be facing the threat of punishment for on duty fraternization, but also would face a punishment if they were even trying to fraternize, would be extra careful. So, yes, I'm saying that while prone to the same mistakes, since they face a greater possibility for punishment, the are probably more careful.
As tough as our military is about sex harrassment and avoiding situations where soldiers are skirting duties for sex, I'm willing to bet that a lot of male-female hanky-panky goes unnoticed. But if you are a gay soldier and you make one mistake in trying to skirt a ban on franterization, then it doesn't matter if you succeed or not, you're still in trouble.
For "real" cases, is there arguably any level of fraud involved when a person joins an organization with the DA/DT policy, receives publicly funded training of some value, and then "tells"?
Unwilling disclosure or discovery is thing, but just deciding to tell is another. Is there any data on the rate of each? The latter is what I'm talking about.
However, I do take issue with your concern over the new costs associated with prosecuting anti-gay harrassment if DADT is repealed. First, the military should already be prosecuting harassment on the basis of perceived sexual orientation. Note that DADT has two components: don't ASK as well as don't tell. Second, the cost of prosecuting any likely increased harassment on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc. should be irrelevant in deciding whether the military should allow racial, religious or sexual minorities to serve. I guess this is part of a broader criticism of the tenor of this post though: DADT should be repealed because its a stupid ineffectual policy, not because of financial costs associated with recruitment and training. The only "costs" that should be considered are the damage to national security that DADT is causing now. Third, to the extent that anti-gay harassment will happen in the military, DADT only increases that harassment by further stigmatizing homosexuality. Gay people who choose to serve are very well aware of anti-gay prejudices inside and outside the military. They should at least be able to confront those prejudices head-on just as women and racial minorities have done.
The UC arrived at a total cost to the military of $252,374,051. This increase over the GAO's finding is in large part driven by the above discrepancy.
The UC Report noted the discrepancy and then proceeded to use the higher average cost per enlistee of 28,800.
Now, the number used by the UC may or may not be the most accurate one, but there seems to be no reasoning driving their choice other then their belief that "training costs could [not] have declined so precipitously."
Given the small number of gays likely to serve, the idea that gay harassment of heterosexuals will be a problem is not only laughable, it's downright paranoid.
I think the real problem in Dale's numbers is that they fail to address the real cost to conservatives of ending DADT. The real cost will be that there will be gay people saying, "My country thought I was good enough to put my life on the line, but now they say I'm not good enough to [get married/adopt children/keep a job/etc.]."
What about the costs involved in involuntary sodomy aboard ships at sea, or otherwise in harms way? And if you contend that there is no connection between the overtly gay in the military and a significant rise in non-consensual sodomy, both prosecuted and unreported, I doubt your sincerity as well as your knowledge.
The military has a huge problem in this area. Both with forceful homosexual rape, and with chickenhawking of eighteen through twenty-two year old males who are away from home for the first time. These costs are considerable, and the "cost accounting" to defend forcing the military to accept overt sodomy presents considerable, and to some degree imponderable costs.
I have litigated enough of these cases, from the "phantom feeler" in open bay berthing, to forced sodomy, to a young Mormon "convinced" he was a homsexual under the UCMJ on the one hand, to the more consensual overt public displays of affection violating the DADT policy on the other. All of it is contrary to good order and discipline in the military. I have seen lives destroyed, and the psychology of young males permanently tortured as a result of the overly permissable policy of DADT. Taking this further will bring far worse consequences.
And no, I don't have nice numeric figures to three decimal places of significant figure to prove the point. This "cost-benefit" analysis is glib and dishonest, and means approximately nothing.
In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "Don't speak to me of Naval tradition, it is all rum, sodomy, and the lash." The problem of sodomy in the military is not new, but in the interest of permitting large numbers of males to live in extremely close quarters for extended periods of time, all sexual conduct must be susceptible to prohibition.
The introduction of women into operational positions introduces many of the same good order and discipline problems, but that is a different discussion.
Finally, approaching this as a libertarian doesn't change the calculus. When you consider that third parties are harmed on a regular basis, the cost accounting isn't very convincing. Further, when sodomy is overtly permitted, behaviors which would be unacceptable from hetero males toward females under "conduct unbecoming" will be argued to be part of "the lifestyle". Good order and discipline in the armed forces will be further diminished if the military abandons the last line of objection of DADT.
Just to add some additional punctuation, there have also been homocides, maimings, and severe beatings in the military growing out of refused homosexual advances - going both directions. This is the consequence of diminished good order and discipline. Let's see some cost accounting on that!
Other issues for cost accounting consideration:
Fraternization (difficult to prosecute anyway)
Lifestyle as a defense.
Claims of entitlement
Insurance coverage and claims under the VA
Romantically motivated conflict, presently suppressed by fear of explusion.
If there's a "right to join the military", the current law is unconstitutional. If the current law is constitutional, folks who impose costs can be forced to repay those costs.
Perhaps a median might have been the better choice, or actually using an estimate for each separate branch. They had an estimate by branch, but chose not to use it since that seemed "precipitously low" compared to the average estimate they did use.
In fact, that critique applies to the whole report. The UC report lumps all the discharges together and multiplies the total number discharged by the average result. This does not account for the possibility that the numbers may be skewed in either direction, resulting in a higher or lower total cost.
Cite your evidence if you expect people to believe that rape isn't the virtually exclusive preserve of straight men. I see no reason to think that the population of the military is significantly different than the population as a whole in that regard.
We already have a bit of a problem with these abuses caused by having large numbers of women in the military--but there aren't large numbers of men who would refuse to join the military because of the presence of women, and women prepared to join the armed forces are a lot more than 3% of the population. Even if women in the military drives some men out, the net gain in manpower is dramatic.
No, it's history.
Gays in the Military? A Cautionary Tale
By Kevin M. McCrane, Wall Street Journal, Dec 2, 1992. Page A10
Bill Clinton's desire to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military brings to mind a troubling incident from my own military experience more than a generation ago.
When I turned 18 late in 1945 I discovered that I had missed the war but not the draft. After five weeks of boot camp, I was shipped to San Francisco's Treasure Island, the Navy base where new recruits waited to receive their orders.
It was dark and raw as only San Francisco can be in January when five of us
mustered on a pier to await a ship's boat from the USS Warrick. The new recruits were told the Warrick was an Attack Cargo Auxiliary, which sounded promising. We soon discovered this was a fancy name for a cargo carrier. Even so, we were excited at the prospect of shipping out. Lugging our bags, we arrived on board late at night. We unhooked our berths from their vertical positions and settled down to sleep.
The awakening was sudden, panic-filled. A hand was caressing my leg, running up the inside of my thigh. A dim figure ducked away as I lashed out, kicking, swinging a fist and striking air. There was no more sleep that night.
Our voyage began the next day, our destination Honolulu. But the excitement was gone, at least for me. At the end of a long day riding the sea's rolling swells, I took a 12-inch box-end wrench from the engine room and retreated to my berth. Hanging on to the wrench under my pillow, I slept.
My sense of unease did not go away even when the seasickness passed. On the fourth day at sea I visited the ship's post office. The second-class petty officer manning the tiny cubicle greeted me warmly. Grinning broadly, he stepped back from the counter, dropped his dungarees, fondled himself and made an obscene invitation. I walked away.
Whom do you tell? I chose a third-class petty officer on my watch. He laughed at what I told him. "You're on a French cruiser, kid." He told me to watch out.
It was in the open now, a subject for discussion among the new recruits. Each of us had been accosted, patted, propositioned. Though we were in different divisions, we flocked together for meals, averting our eyes when one of "them" leered in our direction.
There were five such aggressive homosexuals that we knew of on board this ship with almost 250 men. They were all petty officers. Their actions were enough to poison the atmosphere on the Warrick. Meals, showers, attendance at the movies, decisions about where you went on the ship alone—all became part of a worried calculation of risk.
After two weeks at sea, I received the whispered news that the smallest and most vulnerable of our "team" had been sodomized in the paint locker. When I looked at the bearer of this news, I saw that there were tears in his eyes. "Why are they doing this to us?" he asked.
It was a good question. The comments of some petty officers suggested that the rapid discharge of so many veterans at the end of the war had brought with it a slackening of discipline. On board the Warrick this disciplinary neglect had loosened the restraints on homosexual behavior—the threat of discharge was the surest of these—and created an atmosphere where exhibitionism and lewd action were commonplace.
All homosexuals aren't rapists. But in this closed male society, with its enforced communal living, unchecked homosexual appetites wrought havoc. The atmosphere on the USS Warrick in January of 1946 does have a present-day parallel—the atmosphere of fear that rules in today's prisons.
Is there a lesson here for Mr. Clinton? I think so. The U.S. Navy certainly won't turn into a collection of horror ships like the Warrick if he succeeds in ending the ban on homosexuals in the military. But my experience does suggest that military officials are right to worry that "good order and discipline of the services will be impaired" if the ban is lifted.
A postscript: When the Warrick reached Pearl Harbor in that long-ago winter, a new executive officer reported aboard. On the sixth day in port the PA system blared a summons "for all those personnel being transferred to assemble at the quarterdeck."
I joined the rush topside to see who was going ashore. The ship's rail was lined with crewmen cheering as five petty officers debarked into a P-boat.
I went below decks and ran back up. When the P-boat cleared the side, I dropped my box-end wrench into the blue waters of Pearl Harbor.
and this:
I take a little bit of issue with this conclusion:
Officer training costs may well be off by an order of magnitude, which could boost the cost of DADT by $100 million or more. I would consider that adding considerably to the real cost of DADT.
I think that this is already accounted for in the cost calculations.
First, the UC report does not indicate that it attempted to exclude this category from its report, so presumably they're already factored in the explicit costs. Otherwise, they would be excluded from DA/DT costs and lumped into implicit costs. Either way the net effect would be nil. You're just shifting costs from one category to antoher.
As for the implicit costs of investigation, I believe these are conducted for all gay discharges. I don't think they investigate just the ones that are rumored to be ane excuse for leaving.
I don't think the UC report included the costs of investigation, so that would increase the overall cost of DA/DT. Nevertheless, because they have to have the investigations anyway, I don't think straight servicmen taking advantage of it increases the cost over and above what would already be implied in DA/DT.
I never claimed to be intimately involved in the process, and AFAIK, there has never been a published study of denial rates, etc.
A legitimate study would likely find an interesting phenomenon--both the legitimate and the false claims would end up in both accepted and rejected categories.
Not as much as you might think. My understanding from talking to the JAGs who did this on a daily basis was that the risks of improperly denying a valid claim were minimal. The standard to be met wasn't that hard to meet, and many of the denials were simply idiots who couldn't resist telling everyone that they were going to scam the system.
One thing that your aside comment suggests is that indeed there is more of a stigma attached to homosexuality among men (you noted that most cases of "false" claims were women--perhaps I misunderstood?).
Stigma aside, in my experience, young women in their first term were far more likely to realize that the military wasn't for them. DA/DT was just an easy way to fix their "mistake" without fulfulling another 3-5 years of a commitment. (There were other ways, BTW, and DA/DT was not among the most common)
I do, however, suspect that stigma kept many similarly situated young men from claiming homosexuality.
You both are way more concerned about sodomy inside the barracks than anyone I've ever met. A friend of mine has the largest pile of military porn I've ever seen, and he doesn't discuss it that much!
It's downright offensive and indicative of such a small, bigoted mind that you both turn to fantastic scenarios of rape and molestation in order to back up your concerns and beliefs, and in order to justify wild-eyed prejudices of the fictional southern homophobe who apparently makes up 99.9% of the military.
If any liberal made a similar ad homenim slur against Southerners in the military, they would be browbeat to no end, called ivory tower elitists and disparaged for attacking people they don't understand. You and your ilk on this board are doing the same thing. I do not understand how you feel you have the right and privilege to insult the men and women in uniform this way.
Finally, regarding the number of soldiers who are turned out for being gay, and the asinine suggestion that they should have to pay for their training: You might as well suggest that anyone convincted of any violation of military rules, or anyone who is moved down a rank because of violation should have to pay back their costs to the military, because they should have known going in that they were a lawbreaker.
What you are forgetting is that the policy is also DON'T ASK -- yet we've seen instances where military personnel were cruising the internet to find and bust gay colleagues. Also, you are forgetting that because of various oppressive cultural aspects, many people do not confront their sexuality until later in life, and are not able to accept their own orientation.
Seriously, pay back? Let's get serious.
And if we're going to just throw around anecdotes and Winston Churchill quotes (he is relevant to this, how?), maybe we shouldn't be discussing this at all.
I believe, this is off-base. If the rest of your argument is true--and a number of people seem to argue that it is--the costs would dramatically drop if this was no longer a way to get out. No more gay removal--no easy way out that only costs the military money. Given that the "investigations" costs are negligible next to the costs of training and recruitment, the net costs would certainly go down.
Personally, I see this argument as being significantly overstated.
Hovsep Joseph,
I did say that there is plenty of this going on even under the current policy and, yes, it should be prosecuted. The reality is, of course, that it is not, likely because the command shares the sentiment of the harassers and because it's all on the government nickel (the costs to the service are considered to be irrelevant). This is why I drew the parallel with the Civil Rights Act--a change in policy will require agressive prosecution, including of ranking officers.
Public_Defender,
This seems exactly right. The parallel should be drawn directly to the anti-Semitic attitudes in the European military corps before WWI. In most countries, practicing Jews were not allowed to serve, even in countries with conscription (e.g. Russia). So overt expressions of anti-Semitism included accusations of cowardice and lack of patriotism, split loyalties, etc. If the policy were reversed, conservatives would lose a major issue with which to scare the poor shmucks who are susceptible to this sort of propaganda (that would be about 30% of the electorate).
B.Bleier,
This is a classic homophobic fantasy--if you let those fa****s into society, they'll rape the straight men! As Cornelius noted, if anyone has to worry about forced sodomy and rape, it is women from heterosexual males. If the Tailhook affair and the Air Force Academy recent notoriety don't get your attention, nothing will.
Let's give credit where credit is due, shall we? The problem was not with the women joining the military, but with stodgy old men resenting their admission and goading young men into supporting their cause by illegal means. Perhaps we should have an army of eunuchs.
I think that does more to prove my point than refute it.
Scenarios? Sorry, But Mr. Bleier was discussing cases with which he had personal experience. I gave not a scenario, but an article by someone describing his own experience.
Look, if you think that there are no homosexual men who will take advantage of their position for sex, that's just fine. Live in your little fantasy. But we know that there are heterosexual men who take advantage of their position for sex. (Perhaps homosexual men are so much superior to heterosexual men.) That's why civilian life has sexual harrassment laws; that's why the military has a long-standing traditions about fraternization. While these rules prohibit voluntary relationships, they exist because even more so than in civilian life, hierarchy makes it easy to manipulate or pressure subordinates into situations that they really don't want.
I also didn't make the claim that "99.9%" of the military was so homophobic that they wouldn't stay in post-DADT. I was very clear that it only had to be 3% who elected to not join, or not re-enlist, to destroy any manpower gain from repealing DADT. This was very explicit; I don't see how you could have honestly misread it.
Public_Defender writes:
You mean that human nature has changed in the last sixty years? Sorry, but abuse of power is a fundamental flaw of human beings. In civilian life, if you have a boss that is pressuring you for sex, you can go home at the end of the day, look for an attorney, quit your job, perhaps go to his boss. The military is a different situation. On a ship, or a military base, your freedom to quit, or to go over your boss's head, are severely limited.
Public_Defender,
That's one way of viewing the policy, but there is a more rational view that is part of the military's reasoning.
For the same reason that the military does not allow mixed male/female combat units, the military bans mixed straight/gay combat units probably because it multiplies the possibility of fraternization while on duty.
Put someone in a group of people with whom they are attracted to and you are more likely to see fraternization than if you limit units to people who are not attracted to each other.
I didn't mean to imply that the studies were attempting to exclude the costs of discharging straight people pretending to be gay. Rather, I was addressing what I took to be an argument or implication of some commentators that such costs should be excluded. My first point was really just that those costs associated with those discharges (at least in cases where a discharge would not otherwise occur) remain costs associated with the policy, even if in such a case no gay person has actually been discharged.
Second, I was also assuming that investigations occurred in all cases. But I would suggest that does mean the marginal cost is zero. Indeed, I took Jed's point to be that a great deal of the investigation is devoted to determining whether or not the person is actually gay, and that increased after they determined straight people were pretending. So, if there were no straight people pretending to be gay, presumably that portion of the investigation could be dropped. Hence, all this counts as an additional cost attributable to DA/DT.
Buck,
I couldn't follow your comment. It seems to me that you are actually agreeing with me: to the extent that straight people are using DA/DT as an easy out, that increases the early-discharge cost of the policy. Whether or not the increased investigation costs are on the same order of magnitude as the early-discharge costs, they also add to the cost of the policy. So, all this is adding to the costs of the policy, and conversely all these costs would disappear if the policy was eliminated.
We do have plenty of problems with heterosexual rape in the military today. If you want to pretend that homosexuals aren't going to be tempted to commit rape when in positions of power, fine. But in civilian life, where they can't get away with this as easily--they do so. For example, Doe v. Capital Cities et al., 50 Cal. App. 4th 1038 (1996). As I point out here, at least some of the defendants in this rape case seem to have suffered no negative effects in the gay community from being sued for drugging and raping someone.
Now, I am prepared to believe that guys like this are an aberration in the gay community, just as rapists are an aberration in the straight community. But don't pretend that gay men don't commit rape. You would have to be a law professor to believe something that absurd.
I could not write a parody of liberalism like this without being called a constructor of strawmen. You don't suppose that young men, who are notoriously weak in self-esteem, could have decided to harrass women in the military without their higher-ups telling them to do so?
You don't suppose that because some young men commit rape in civilian life that they could ever be rapists in the military?
Rape and sexual harrassment is a problem anytime you have young men combined with women. Why do you think that gay men are exempt from this possibility? It is a legitimate question as to whether this is going to be a big problem, or a little problem, once you repeal DADT. But pretending that it won't be a problem at all is dishonest.
Not happening. Let's all just ignore the two straight men who are obsessed with sodomy.
I seriously doubt there would be a noticeable difference in the overall rape rate. Indeed, if anything, I would suspect the second military would have a lower rape rate simply because it would have a military culture that was less obsessed about sex, and gay sex in particular. But again, I doubt there would be any notable difference.
Additionally, one does not have to agree with the idea of discharged gay members recouping their recruitment and training costs to see that the analogy you offer is nonsensical and irrelevent. In the first case we have, in a strict sense, a case of fraudulent enlistment (the member knew he was gay and joined anyway), while you posit a case where a member who legitimately joined then incurred a punishment. Additionally, you seem to overlook that in the first case the member is removed from service while in your scenario that is not necessarilly the case. A more apt analogy would be where a convicted felon failed to disclose his conviction upon enlisting. In any event, there are provisions to recoup the military's costs in the event of fraudulent enlistment, so a discussion of pursuing this option in the case of discharges resulting from DADT is not only far from unserious, but directly relevent as a rebuttal to the solely economic costs raised by our host.
Finally, despite your claim to shun anecdotes you feel it necessary to mention the isolated incidents where "military personnel were cruising the internet to find and bust gay colleagues". I've said it before, but unless every organization and command I have ever been attached to or associated with in the past nineteen years was vastly different than all the others, in every case I had personal knowledge of in which a member was discharged for homosexuality the member's sexuality came to light either through self-reporting (i.e. forgetting the policy is DON'T TELL) or incidental to the investigation of another, usually more serious, disciplinary matter (AWOL, assault, rape, etc.).
I am concerned not only that homosexual assaults, harrassment and rape will happen with greater frequency in a post-DADT military (they most certainly will), but more that because of a perception of gays as an oppressed group that such incidents will not be treated as fairly and seriously as they should. And, as much as you profess to eschew anecdotes over evidence, it will the anecdotes of leaders looking the other direction or discounting assaults/rape out of PC deference that may ultimately have the greatest effect on both economics and readiness. The perception of accepted homosexual assault in the prison system works as a great deterrence to some. I do not wish the same dynamic to similarly effect the military.
Its not just about gaining and losing manpower. You have to consider the kind of people the military would gain versus the kind that it might lose. We could stand to lose those members of the military whose fear and repulsion of gay Americans is so overpowering that it overrides the patriotic duty they take to protect this country. If we lose those people in favor of soldiers who want so badly to serve their country that their patriotism overrides their fear of persecution, I'd say we should go for it hands down. And I stand by my earlier assertion that real-life members of the military are not the sexually paranoid bigots that some commenters here would have them be. To the extent that there are such soldiers who rank homophobia over patriotism, they constitute a very small minority, a minority that should be purged because they constitute a serious national security threat.
Medis,
I see your point now. You're right that, if a majority of the investigation is involved in trying to determine whether the person is in fact gay, then that would be an additional cost to DA/DT.
A weaker counter-point might then be: supposing these people would try to get out of the military anyway, then it might be the case that they'll take advantage of other loopholes that will also require investigation.
That point is subject to the assumption that the military investigates all discharges, and that the loopholes they would then find would require as extensive investigation as they do for DA/DT.
Setting that aside, have there been any recruiting/retention problems in the Israeli, British, or Canadian militaries? Have American soldiers had any worse of a time working with British soldiers in Iraq?
Indeed, all this has to be put in marginal terms, since these straight people might look for other ways out. Nonetheless, the basic point would be that any additional out for straight people--particularly one where you can trigger the process simply by "telling" someone something--is bound to add to the relevant costs at the margins.
Here's one of your fellow leftists insisting that men raping men in the U.S. Army is common, but those are straight men raping straight men: But in gayspeak, when two men have sex voluntarily, it is gay or at least bisexual; when one man rapes another man (or rapes a little boy), then it is those disgusting heterosexuals at it again.
Good question. The British military is probably the closest analogy. The Canadian military is so tiny that I don't see how they could have retention or recruiting problems. The Israeli military is rather the opposite situation, since so much of the population serves in it, either regular or reserves, and I think that this is partly because of a draft?
Public_Defender,
You raised this point in another set of posts, but I'll say it again.
It's hard to have recruiting problems for a military where service is mandatory for every citizen, as is the case in Israel.
I also wouldn't use the case of Canada, since it's kind of hard to have recruiting/retention problems when you don't have a military to begin with [Never miss a chance to bash the Canadian military].
As for Britain, I don't have definitive information on the military, but I don't know how well they're doing of late. Nevertheless, as others have pointed out earlier, their culture has 20-30 years on American culture in terms of progressiveness, so I don't think they're quite comparable.
What is the overall military budget over the same time frame as this study? What percentage of recruiting costs, personnel costs, etc., does this alleged cost of DA/DT represent?
And as others point out above, the vast majority of Soldiers discharged under DA/DT don't want to be there and are the ones who "DO TELL." Most commanders aren't going to fight to retain a Soldier who doesn't want to be in the Army. Can you quantify that with $$?
Just want to clarify that you said:
...before you launched into your ridiculous, unverified, anecdotal, irrational and therefore irrefutable rant about gay rape.
Whatever happened to those conservatives who say things like "we've already got laws on the books." We've got anti-rape laws in the military. When needed, they are used.
And I'm not even going to be begin to discuss the deterrent factor of prison sodomy.
Serious discussion please, no foaming at the mouth bigotry and ludicrous accusations of sodomy, and certainly no discussion of the slippery slope to rape that come from knowing or working with a gay person. I ask it again, why do you have such a low opinion of our soldiers?
(1) A nonzero number of homophobic people would refrain from entering the military if DADT were abolished;
(2) A nonzero number of gays (possibly even me) and gay-friendly people would be inspired to join the military if DADT were abolished;
(3) A nonzero number of heterosexuals try to get discharges under DADT and either (a) wouldn't be discharged without it or (b) would try to get discharged some other way;
(4) Some administrative costs would be incurred in changing the policy;
etc. etc. etc. If we want to know what the real costs of DADT are, then we have to take account of all that stuff.
I suspect that these dubious calculations are really supposed to be thinly veiled arguments of the form "DADT is expensive, therefore we should abolish it," which strikes me as not particularly relevant, given that any estimate of costs is going to be a drop in the bucket relative to the military budget. The real questions should be:
(1) Is DADT fair? (No)
(2) Does DADT increase or decrease our military effectiveness? (Decrease)
We might add (3): Is DADT based on a raw desire to harm a disfavored group? (Yes) Those, not these quasi-bogus cost estimates, are the real reasons we should scrap DADT.
Since this post asked for some economic analysis (which is missing from most of these comments), this cost is completely irrelevant to the so-called costs of DA/DT.
Whether a Soldier serves one year or 30 years in the Army, there are travel costs for separating from the Army. These costs aren't unique to Soldiers separated under DA/DT; nor are they unique to Soldiers who separate before their enlistment period is over.
Every Soldier is entitled to travel (and shipment of goods) back to his or her home after their service period is over.
This is a military cost, not a DA/DT cost -- and certainly makes me skeptical of the other costs alleged in this study.
First, let's start by not characterizing people's sincere beliefs about right and wrong as some sort of pathology. All reasonable people place a boundary between acceptable and unacceptable sexual behavior, and on the broad spectrum of where people draw that line, we're not talking about a huge difference here. Most of the people you speak of would leave, I suspect, because their religious beliefs, i.e. what they see as their duty to God, overrule their duty to country. The value of these people to the military is not a function of your approval of their beliefs, but rather how well they can contribute to the millitary's primary mission, which is to kill people and break things. It may well be that the people who would leave the military over repealing DADT are the ones who make the best soldiers. There would definitely be a loss of conservatives and a gain of liberals, and given the correlation of liberalism with pacifism, there's a good case to be made that, while it might be a great trade off for many professions or industries, it would not be good for military effectiveness. This leads to another consideration of the cost of repeal. Given that the internal leadership of the military wants to keep the ban, and claims it's for valid mission related reasons, and they ARE the ones with extensive education in the art of war, what if they're right? The result could ultimately be the USA losing a major conflict, and what are the costs of that?
Regardless of how one feels about the various social issues, I'm always a little wary of those who want to force the military to be just like civilian society. War is a unique environment that most civil