But already the survey has drawn criticism for any number of biased questions and assumptions, with a leading DADT-repeal advocacy group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network ( www.sldn.org ) , advising gay troops not to participate.

The repeal-advocacy organization Servicemembers United, has posted the full survey at www.servicemembersunited.org/survey .

"At this time, SLDN cannot recommend that lesbian, gay, or bisexual service members participate in any survey being administered by the Department of Defense [ DoD ] , the Pentagon Working Group or any third-party contractors," said SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis in an initial July 8 statement, responding to news of the survey's distribution.

"While the surveys are apparently designed to protect the individual's privacy," Sarvis added, "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."

By July 9, Sarvis reiterated the organization's concerns, in a follow-up statement.

"As a legal services group, our focus is on ensuring adequate legal protections for those gay and lesbian service members that participate in the surveys," Sarvis explained. "We continue to have discussions with DoD and are working to make sure gay and lesbian service members are protected. At this time, our warning stands that gay and lesbian service members should not take the survey unless adequate legal protections are put in place."

Not all gay-rights and repeal-advocacy organizations are in agreement with SLDN, although both the Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) and Servicemembers United voiced concerns about biased, derogatory and problematic questioning.

Both HRC and Servicemembers United, however, want LGB troops to participate so that DoD officials have some measure of how gay troops view "don't ask, don't tell" and the potential lifting of the ban.

"We think it's critical that the voices of lesbian and gay service members be included in the survey of the troops as they are already part of the fighting force," said Michael Cole, director of HRC's media relations, over the telephone. "If the opinions of service members are to be heard, their opinions need to be heard as well," he explained. "We believe the privacy safeguards in place are sufficient to assure anonymity. We are not concerned about people being outed by the survey."

Still, " [ o ] ur primary concern has always been the need for a survey in the first place," Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for HRC, told the Advocate, adding, "To us, it seems anachronistic, demeaning, and not in keeping with the chain of command to ask the service members what they think about integration of gays lesbians into the military."

Sarvis took the HRC concerns about the survey's need even further. "We have made clear from the beginning that no survey of the troops should be done," he said. "Surveying the troops is unprecedented; it did not happen in 1948 when President Truman ended segregation and it did not happen in 1976 when the service academies opened to women. Even when the military placed women on ships at sea, the Pentagon did not turn to a survey on how to bring about that cultural change."

The survey's results are to be included in the final report of the Pentagon's working group that is studying the potential effects of how to implement a repeal of DADT. The report is due to the president, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen Dec. 1. The research firm Westat, in conjunction with the working group, designed the survey. But no outside stakeholders were provided any opportunity to weigh in on survey design.

Asked what assuaged concerns about gay troops' participation, Servicemembers United Executive Director Alexander Nicholson e-mailed, "The working group explained many of the security measures put in place to ensure confidentiality and anonymity in the survey process" during a meeting last week, including Westat requirements, in administrating the survey, "to strip out all personally identifying information before the aggregate data are turned over to [ DoD ] ," to "destroy all personally identifying data" and "not [ to ask ] about sexual orientation in the survey."

Nicholson added, "The working group assured us that they consider any info about a specific service member's sexual orientation obtained through this process to be non-credible for the purpose of inquiry or discharge proceedings. According to the regulatory changes to the administration of the DADT that were made in March, non-credible evidence cannot be used as a basis for discharge."

News of the troop survey even garnered national mainstream broadcast media coverage on NBC Nightly News where Sarvis raised a key question: "What will be done with these results?" he asked, voicing concern about the 10 survey items dealing with privacy issues that some consider to border on homophobia. "Nobody should be surprised if we see bias and prejudice surfacing here."

One question, for instance, asks about sharing an "open bay shower" in "bathroom facilities" with "someone you believe to be gay or lesbian" offering a variety of multiple choice responses, including: "take no action," "use the shower at a different time," "discuss how we expect each other to behave and conduct ourselves," "talk to a chaplain, mentor, or leader about how to handle the situation," "talk to a leader to see if I had other options," "something else," or "don't know." In selecting something else, respondents are able to specify their answer.

For his part, Gates defended the survey, saying, "I think it is very important for us to understand from our men and women in uniform the challenges they see." At the same time he urged gays and lesbian troops to take part in the survey, assuring that their confidentiality would be protected against any prosecution under DADT.

In more recent developments, the Palm Center, a public-policy think tank based at the University of California-Santa Barbara, issued a policy response brief July 9, concluding the results of the Pentagon troops survey "should be considered" in DoD's "decision-making process, but should not be determinative in and of themselves."

©2010 Chuck Colbert. All rights reserved.