Customer Reviews

And the Flag Was Still There: Straight People, Gay People, and Sexuality in the U.S. Military (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies) (Haworth Gay and Lesbian Studies)

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"And the Flag Was Still There: Straight People, Gay People and Sexuality in the U.S. Military," by Lois Shawver, is an interesting addition to the substantial body of literature on this topic. The book features a foreword by Margarethe Cammermeyer (who tells her own story of being a lesbian in the U.S. Army in the book "Serving in Silence"). An "About the Author" paragraph at the start of the book identifies Shawver as a clinical psychologist who has worked as a psychotherapist for 20 years. This paragraph also notes, "She served as an expert in the Canadian review of their ban on homosexuals in the military and was influential in the lifting of that ban in October 1992."

The main text of the book is divided into nine chapters, as follows:

1. "Why the Military Would Ban Homosexuals"

2. "The Question of Heterosexual Modesty"

3. "Nakedness and the Etiquette of Disregard"

4. "Why Some People Dislike Gays"

5. "The Problem with Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

6. "How Many Homosexuals Are There Really?"

7. "How Would Homosexuals Affect Morale?"

8. "Stories of Real People Hurt by the Ban"

9. "How It Would Work in Our Post Cold War Military"

Shawver states her position in her preface: "I have become increasingly confident that it is time for the United States to drop our military ban against homosexuals." Shawver has clearly been diligent in documenting the facts that support her argument. The main text is followed by extensive endnotes (pages 155-214), many of which incorporate substantial quotes. These endnotes are followed by a lengthy bibliography (pages 215-249). The book also includes separate subject and name indexes.

The book is full of interesting material and compelling arguments. Shawver devotes substantial space to the concern that problems would result from gay and straight troops sharing shower facilities. She looks at parallels to other nudity situations in order to defuse the issue. She also relates and analyzes some true stories of gay people who have served in the military, and whom she has interviewed; she details her interview process in the endnotes.

Shawver takes a hard look at the process by which suspected homosexuals are investigated. Among the most interesting material in the book are a fictionalized example of an interrogation session, and a true story of a wily gay military man who managed to outwit his interrogators. Shawver also discusses the experiences of a woman, herself gay, who worked for the Naval Investigative Service and was responsible for interrogating others suspected of homosexuality--truly an ironic situation.

Despite much strong material and many valid arguments, the book is severely hurt by Shawver's shortsighted and excessive intellectual investment in her vision of a post-Cold War "New World Order." With a copyright date of 1995, the book predates the horrors of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So Shawver's claim that we "are freed from the urgency of a threatening enemy" (p. 152) makes the book sound like a relic from an era that is past. Her argument is that this new era of relative peace and security offers an opportunity to "redesign" the military. Shawver is correct in noting that the post-Cold War military needs to be more capable of humanitarian interventions (she specifically mentions the Somalia intervention of the early 1990s) and other nontraditional missions, but her conflation of this issue with the gays-in-the-military issues is awkward and uses faulty logic.

Early in the book Shawver claims, "We can count on the fact that our military will be primarily concerned in this new world with a peacemaking role" (p. 13). Obviously, the 21st century U.S. military still needs to be capable of engaging and destroying enemy forces. Shawver's over-reliance on the short-lived "New World Order" ultimately weakens the overall book and detracts from the many valid arguments and compelling stories she presents. Despite the book's flaws, however, I strongly recommend it to any individual making a serious study of the gays-in-the-military issue.

I was shocked that Lois Shawver who paints herself as representing the "TRUE POSTMODERN" would have written a book with such obvious underpinnings of a MODERNIST theory of sexuality, Kinsey (1948,1953).
As most readers know, Kinsey as Shawver has done in this book counterpoised heterosexuality and homosexuality on a single bipolar continum, which ranges from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality, creating a kind of "zero sum game," in which the more one is hetereosexual, the less one is homosexual, and vice versa.
At the outset, the lack of clarification of the terms "hetersexual", "bisexual", and "homsexual" are much more complicated than thier casual usage by Shawver. Perhaps this book and the obvious modernist underpinnings shed light on the assault led by Lois Schawver on gay lesbian and bisexual participants in the Marriage Family Therapy online community. This book leads to the forcing out and osterization of homosexuals within thier communities with the alternatives left after shedding the current don't ask don't tell policy in effect.

Clinical psychologist Shawver has probed the nature of our military policies towards gays and lesbians in the military with uncanny precision<LB> The book appeared at the time President Clinton decided to fink out on the issue, hoping to appease everybody<LB>Issue by issue she explores the myths, her unruffled, calm manner contributing strength to her argument that these military policies are absurd and wrongfully prejudicial<LB>Among these erroneous assumptions are that "false modesty" prevails between straight and gay men as it does between women and men; gays corrupt the "national moral tone" and damage national defense; gays like anonymous sex more than straights do, etc. <LB>Shawver envisions a new military were gays and lesbians are full-fledged members<LB>The policy of pretending there are no homosexuals in the military (the don't ask, don't tell policy) is "a festering wound in our culture...hyprocisy"<LB>

I am moved by Shawver's arguments, and that she is a heterosexual reflects the enlightened attitudes for a non-gay, non-discriminating person to have<LB> All who seek to be informed on this painful issue must read AND THE FLAG WAS STILL THERE<LB>

This book was the best book I've read in years. I would reccomend it to any gay or lesbian who was considering going into the military.

I decided to comment on this book after readig the critical review of it on this site. Like that reviewer, personally I was not interested in the footnotes, but I didn't turn to the end of the book to read them. But I did like the stories from her interviews with a number of gays and lesbians in the military, that showed how they felt in their dealings with straights, with the army, and with the pressure of the army's rules.

I thought the book was worth reading for me. I have a gay relative who wanted me to look at the book and I think it has helped me understand him and his world better. I enjoyed reading it and it was helpful for me so I highly recommend it.

This book is very funny. For all the wrong reasons. One sentence: "To look at the homosexual and say he or she is unnatural is like looking at an unconventionally clipped poodle or even an unclipped poodle and seeing that as unnatural." Uh-huh. Required reading for anyone into uncut poodles.