Elaine Donnelly is an American conservative activist and anti-feminist principally concerned with preserving the traditional culture of the U.S. military. She is a contributing editor at Human Events magazine.National Review: Elaine Donnelly’s Bio & Archive , accessed February 19, 2012 She is the founder of the Center for Military Readiness which opposes the service of gay and transgender people and favors limiting the positions open to women in the military.Military gender ideologies in the media, Gender Ideologies and Military Labor Markets in the U.S.Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of WomenSame-Sex Marriage Faces Military Limits It has been described as a right-wing organisation by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other sources.

Elaine Chenevert Donnelly attended Schoolcraft College and the University of Detroit. She lives in Livonia, Michigan, with her husband, Terry, and is the mother of two daughters.Center for Military Readiness: Elaine Donnelly's Bio , accessed February 19, 2012

Activism and employment Donnelly spent several years as an activist in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment as National Media Chair of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and then founded the Michigan Stop-ERA Committee.Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan: Elaine Chenevert Donnelly Papers, 1973–2003 1985–2001, accessed February 19, 2012 She was active in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. She told an interviewer that her political engagement began with concern that initiatives to extend the rights of women would result in drafting women like her own daughter into the military and developed to the broader issue of women's participation in the military.Deborah G. Douglas and Amy E. Foster, American Women and Flight Since 1940 (University Press of Kentucky, 2004), p. 302, available online, accessed March 26, 2012

In 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger appointed her to a three-year term on the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.Elaine Donnelly, "Constructing the Co-Ed Military," Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, vol. 14 (May 2007), available online , accessed February 19, 2012

In 1992, she served as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, a presidential commission that considered whether women should be allowed to fly combat missions, and joined the 8–7 majority that opposed such an expanded role in combat for women.New York Times: "Ships, Yes. Planes, No.; Panel Rejects Major Role For Women in Combat," November 8, 1992, accessed February 19, 2012 In 2009, she maintained that opposition when the roles available to women were expanding during combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.New York Times: Lizette Alvarez, "G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier," August 115, 2009, accessed February 19, 2012

English professor and folklorist Carol Burke, in her 2004 study of the culture of the U.S. military, says:Carol Burke, Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture (Beacon Press, 2004), 128, available online, accessed February 19, 2012

Views on women in the military

Donnelly opposes the idea that women should be considered interchangeable with men in direct ground combatForcing females into combat is real ‘war on women’ (see Women in combat).

Donelly argues that reducing requirements in terms of female recruits' ability to handle physically demanding tasks may reduce the effectiveness of the whole unit,"Women in Combat" , The Center for Military Readiness and stated that "... there are separate gender-specific standards for the throwing of hand-grenades, primarily because comprehensive tests at Parris Island in 1987 and 1990 found that 45% of female Marines could not throw a live grenade safely beyond the 15 meter bursting radius".CMR Notes -- January, 1998 Another opponent of gender norming, economist Walter E. Williams, states that "[o]fficers who insist that females be held accountable to the same high standards as males are seen by higher brass as obstructionist and risk their careers".

Donnelly cited as evidence that the military was applying a "double standard" to men and women in the military the case of Lamar S. Owens Jr., a United States Naval Academy student expelled in 2007, though found innocent of rape and sentenced to "no punishment" for conduct unbecoming an officer, while his female accuser was not punished.Holly Yeager, "Soldiering Ahead," The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (Summer, 2007), 62 She has said that "the concept of equality does not fit in combat environments... Women in combat units endanger male morale and military performance."Hilary Neroni, The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (State University of New York Press, 2005), 135, available online, accessed April 5, 2012 She has objected to allowing women to serve on submarines because the air quality poses "a high-risk cause of birth defects in unborn children—particularly in the early weeks of gestation when a woman may not even know she is pregnant". She said admiral Michael Mullen was "thoughtlessly pushing for co-ed submarines, apparently to please military and civilian feminists".U.S. News & World Report: Paul Bedard, "Group Cites Dangers of Submarine Air to Pregnant Women," September 28, 2009, accessed April 5, 2012

Views on LGBT people in the military Donnelly opposes allowing LGBT people to openly serve in the military.New York Times: Elaine Donnelly, "Military Life is Difficult Enough," May 3, 2009, accessed February 19, 2012 In 2006, she called the growing effort to repeal the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy that prohibited service by open LGBT people, "a big P.R. campaign". She said that "the law is there to protect good order and discipline in the military, and it's not going to change."New York Times: John Files, "Advocates Hope Supreme Court Ruling Can Renew Attention to 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'," March 13, 2006, accessed February 19, 2012 In March 2009, Donnelly gathered the signatures of more than a thousand retired military officers in opposition to the repeal of DADT, a letter cited by senator John McCain in Senate hearings.The Guardian: "Retired military officers: keep ban on gays", March 31, 2009, accessed February 19, 2012

Views of her critics The Palm Center's Aaron Belkin, who opposes Donnelly's positions on military personnel issues, has written that she "runs the brilliantly named Center for Military Readiness out of her living room in Livonia, Michigan."Aaron Belkin, How We Won: Progressive Lessons from the Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (Kindle Edition, 2011), location 312 He called her "the most prominent purveyor of the politics of paranoia" and an "archconservative who has spent years vilifying both gays and women in the military."Belkin, How We Won, location 910

Writing about a report that Donnelly compiled from stolen documents in the Kara Hultgreen case, Susan Barnes, an attorney for another female pilot mentioned in the report, stated that "the Report MISREPRESENTS the content of those training records. I know. I have read the Report and have compared it to the content of the training records.” She also described the CMR as "a radical right front for a woman named Elaine Donnelly who has a long, and very public, record of opposition to military women.”

Donnelly has deposited some of her papers at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library.

Select works

References

External links Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told – Dana Milbank, op-ed column in the Washington Post Elaine Donnelly, "Gays in the Military: A Losing Cause", National Review, November 4, 2010 Elaine Donnelly and Aaron Belkin Debate DADT at Maxwell Air Force Base, summer 2010