Why Do People Have To Push Me Like That?

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If it had been anyone else who stood up to Private Calvin Glover about his outrageous, macho bragging that summer night, things might have turned out differently. But it may have been just too humiliating to be challenged by Private First Class Barry Winchell, of all people. Glover was in full boast on the eve of July Fourth as he and his fellow soldiers drank beer around the concrete picnic table outside their barracks at Fort Campbell, Ky. "He would say he was on 'smack' since he was 10," Private First Class Nikita Sanarov said, "and had been on probation since he was 12. Stuff like that." Recalls Private First Class Arthur Hoffman: "He was just trying to make himself look like a badass. The stories were pretty out there."

Finally one of the beer drinkers, Winchell, told Glover that he was full of it. Glover walked up to Winchell and tried to knock a beer from his hand but failed. Winchell insisted he didn't want to fight, but something drove Glover to keep provoking one. Finally, Winchell tossed his beer aside and hit Glover quickly several times with the heel of his hand. As Glover reeled backward, Winchell grabbed him around the waist and threw him to the ground. That should have been the end to an ordinary fight, but for Glover the stakes were higher. He had just been beat by a man whose suspected homosexuality had preoccupied the barracks for months. "It ain't over," Glover vowed to Winchell. "I will...kill you."

That is the story that Army prosecutors are expected to tell in a court-martial scheduled to begin this week in the tiny, white courthouse at this Kentucky post. They will allege that Glover followed through on his threat the next night, creeping up to Winchell's cot as he slept and smashing his head in with a baseball bat. But Glover is not the only one on trial. The Army is haunted by the fear that it may be seen as his accomplice for fumbling the military's policy on gays in uniform, not just in this case, but on a more widespread basis.

Until 1994, when the Clinton Administration imposed the doctrine of "Don't ask, don't tell," gays had been barred, at least in theory, from military service. Under the new rules, endorsed by Congress, commanders cannot ask about a soldier's sexual orientation without specific evidence of homosexual conduct. And soldiers, regardless of their orientation, are to be permitted to serve as long as they keep their sex lives private. Yet the number of soldiers discharged for being gay has grown steadily since the policy began, from 156 in 1993 to 312 last year. Antigay harassment, too, is on the rise in the military's ranks, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a pro-gay group that tracks such incidents. In fact, the allegations surrounding Winchell's life and death suggest that the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, far from being a neat compromise between barring gays and openly accepting them, is being carried out in a way that can create a dangerous atmosphere of intrigue in the ranks.