1. 50 Years Of Pentagon Studies Support Gay Soldiers

3. He finds that the facts of gay servicemembers' fitness to serve have changed little over 50 years.

4. The Defense Department's own criticisms of military policies toward gay soldiers have remained consistent, too.

6. Back then the Navy's Crittenden Report found "no factual data" to support the idea that they posed a greater security risk than heterosexual personnel.

7. Straight officers boasting secrets due to "feelings of inadequacy" were a realer threat.

8. "The service should not move ahead of civilian society nor attempt to set substantially different standards in attitude or action with respect to homosexual offenders."

10. The goal was to determine whether their service under current policies created security risks.

11. "Studies of homosexual veterans make clear that having a same gender or an opposite-gender orientation is unrelated to job performance in the same way as is being left or right-handed."

15. It pulled together the broadest range of data, including opinion of active-duty officers and attitudes of foreign militaries with openly gay service members.

16. Policy should set equal expectations of conduct for all servicemembers, and "emphasis should be placed on behavior ... not on teaching tolerance or sensitivity."

18. Change in the military moves top-down.

19. The data are well-known; what remains is an ideological shift among military leadership.

21. “ The military doesn't exist in a vacuum from the rest of American culture.”

22. “ There is a generational divide. The newest generation and the next generation of military leadership are much more open and tolerant ... and that is helping the top-down process.”