But Adm. Michael Mullen's stunning testimonial this week in favor of ending the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays may mark one of the few times in military history that a senior active-duty officer has marched ahead of the ranks on a major social issue.
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Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke out against the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy." Abolishing that policy "is the right thing to do," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
"He could have very easily said, 'I'm prepared to execute whatever law Congress passes,' but obviously there is a little more to it for him," said Paul Eaton, a former two-star Army general who waited to retire before writing an op-ed calling on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign over his handling of the Iraq war. "The issue of moral courage is not lost on anybody when somebody stands up and does the right thing."
Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates voiced support for President Obama's call to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. "We received our orders from the commander in chief, and we are moving out accordingly," he said.
Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation's senior uniformed military officer, took it a step further.
"It is the right thing to do," he said. "No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, personally, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."
University of Cincinnati historian James Westheider, author of "Fighting on Two Fronts: African-Americans and the Vietnam War," said Mullen is fairly unusual in the annals of the armed forces. "The uniformed military usually are advised to not make policy statements," he said. "They're more worried about implementation."
It took nearly seven years after President Truman appointed a committee on civil rights before African-Americans were fully integrated into the Army. Then, as now, the motivation had less to do with morality than military necessity.
"Senior officers take controversial stands on social or cultural issues when there are overriding institutional issues at stake," said Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army officer who teaches military history at Boston University.
He cites Gen. Matthew Ridgway as an example. As commander of the 8th Army during the Korean War, Ridgway ordered military units to be desegregated "not because he was personally committed to racial equality but because maintaining the existing policy interfered with the business of waging a war," Bacevich said.
University of Maryland military sociologist David Segal said just as Ridgway "played a major role in subverting the rumors that black soldiers were bad soldiers," Mullen has made it clear that gays and lesbians have served and continue to do so honorably.
Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, chief of naval operations in the early 1970s, also played an unusual role in changing military culture, said Ronald Krebs, author of "Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship." Zumwalt ordered an end to racial discrimination in the Navy and introduced modernizing touches like allowing men to grow mustaches. Though the moves were controversial – Zumwalt was blamed by some retired admirals for stoking racial incidents aboard two aircraft carriers in 1972 – Krebs said the admiral bucked the tide to shrink the cultural gap between military and civilian worlds.
Bacevich compared past sea changes in attitudes toward minorities and women to the latest controversy over gays.
"Much the same thing is going on here," he said. "With U.S. forces engaged in perpetual war, the Pentagon can ill-afford to treat otherwise able-bodied individuals as ineligible for military service. This, more than Admiral Mullen's conscience, is driving the change."
"I have served with homosexuals since 1968," Mullen said at Wednesday's hearing. "Everybody in the military has, and we understand that."
Segal said such words will have an enormous impact in the top-down culture of the military. "When more junior officers hear people with stars saying, 'This is the way we should be going,' they fall in line," he said.
There were no senior uniformed military chiefs leading the integration of women into the armed forces, said Patricia Schroeder, who was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee.
"My jaw dropped" when she heard Mullen's remarks, said the former lawmaker who led the effort to expand opportunities for women in the military. "From the top brass on down, I can't think of a soul" who spoke out on the issue, despite the growing need after 1974 to fill the ranks of an all-volunteer military. "It reminds you of how important leadership is at the top."
