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Group warns gays that survey could out them

A group backing repeal of the ban on openly gay service members is urging gay troops not to take part in a survey just distributed by the Pentagon, citing concerns over whether the results will truly be held in confidence.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network “at this time ... cannot recommend that lesbian, gay, or bisexual service members participate in any survey being administered by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon Working Group, or any third-party contractors,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of SLDN, which lobbies for repeal and provides free legal services for service members affected by the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“While the surveys are apparently designed to protect the individual’s privacy, there is no guarantee of privacy, and DoD has not agreed to provide immunity to service members whose privacy may be inadvertently violated or who inadvertently outs himself or herself.

“If a service member still wishes to participate, he or she should only do so in a manner that does not reveal sexual orientation,” Sarvis said.

The Pentagon says that a “confidential communications mechanism” has been put in place that shields the identity of service members who, after completing the largely multiple-choice survey, opt to add confidential comments when prompted.

Service members who choose this option are given a unique number that contains no personal identifying information and gives them access to a “confidential dialogue” with a trained moderator employed by Westat, an independent research group, the Pentagon says.

The dialogue element was developed specifically to gather input from currently serving gays and lesbians who can’t acknowledge their sexual orientation without risking separation from service, as well as active-duty service members who don’t feel comfortable openly discussing the subject in forums being held at military bases by the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group, said DoD spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.

Smith also noted that the post-survey dialogue is operated “solely by Westat on a Westat server” that is not part of the military’s computer network. Westat moderators will not ask participants for any identifying information, she said.

If a service member offers their name, “that information will be held in confidence, deleted from the Westat files and not shared with anyone — including DoD,” Smith said.

That explanation did not satisfy SLDN, which had asked the Pentagon prior to the survey’s publication for the survey text, more information on certificates of confidentiality and whether the Pentagon or the Working Group – which is conducting a 10-month study of attitudes and how repeal should be implemented if enacted — “could guarantee immunity” from “don’t ask, don’t tell” if troops were inadvertently “outed” by the surveys.

“The Department of Defense was unable to satisfy our request,” Sarvis said.

The actual text used in the survey has not been released, although Military Times obtained an earlier draft of the text on Wednesday, when the survey went out to 200,000 active-duty and 200,000 reserve and National Guard troops. Two other leading advocacy groups, while expressing concerns about elements of the survey and dialogue, are urging gay service members to take part.

“Having not seen the complete survey, we remain concerned about possible question wording in the study,” said Michael Cole, spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, which supports gay rights throughout American society, not just in the military. “However, it is critical that voices of lesbian and gay service members are included in this study, and we feel that the privacy safeguards are sufficient to maintain anonymity.”

A group that bills itself as “the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans” took a similar stance. “While Servicemembers United remains concerned about unintentional bias in the question wording within this survey, we are satisfied that sufficient measures are in place to protect the confidentiality of any gay and lesbian service member who would like to fully and honestly participate in this survey,” said Alexander Nicholson, the group’s executive director.

As such, Nicholson said, the group “encourages all gay and lesbian active duty troops who received the survey to take this important opportunity to provide their views. We especially encourage gay and lesbian troops to take advantage the opportunity at the end of the survey to participate in a confidential chat about issues related to being gay or lesbian in the U.S. military.”

The Palm Center, a pro-gay research group affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, says it is not taking a position on the confidentiality issue raised by SLDN or on whether service members should participate. But it is keenly interested in the results, said Aaron Belkin, the center’s director.

“Despite some of the problematic aspects of the survey and the research in general, it is important to hear what troops have to say,” Belkin said.

“We’re not afraid of the results,” he said. “We are not afraid of the data. All of the evidence shows that repeal will not harm the military. So if they’re going to go ahead with the survey, then just go ahead with the survey.”

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