[Vision2020] Drop Policy on Gays

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Letters Section of the Army times (www.armytimes.com) with a
special thanks to Sergeant Cristina Frisby.

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Drop policy on gays

Army Times recently published a small article claiming that an Army
spokesperson stated the Guard and Reserves are sending soldiers overseas who
"came out" to get out of deployment, but they are being sent anyway, to be
"dealt with" when they get back ["Gay troops in war zone," Frontlines, Oct.
10] [quoted below].

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"Gay troops in war zone

The Pentagon is sending openly gay service members into combat in Iraq,
military officials said.

'The bottom line is some people are using sexual orientation to avoid
deployment,' Kim Waldron of the U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson,
Ga., told the Washington (D.C.) Blade, a weekly newspaper for the gay
community.

'So in this case, with the Reserve and Guard forces, if a soldier 'tells,'
they still have to go to war and the homosexual issue is postponed until
they return to the U.S. and the unit is demobilized,' Waldron said. 

Researchers at the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, say discharges for being gay
drop during wartime and increase during peacetime."

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If the military would drop its "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't
harass" policy, it wouldn't have to worry about losing soldiers to this
policy.

More important, the Defense Department claims that the policy is to prevent
homosexuals from working in close quarters with other soldiers who are not
gay. 

So why is it sending gay soldiers into combat (definitely a lack of privacy
here), then discharging them when they come back to a garrison environment?
It makes no sense except as blatant discrimination.

The Army is going to send these soldiers into a combat zone, then when they
come back as combat veterans, or are killed or wounded in action, it is
going to take away their benefits and discharge them because they came out
before they went to war.

If you want to keep the gay soldiers in the combat zone, drop the policy. 

As the policy is in effect, the military has an obligation not to let these
soldiers serve, because it is policy. The military has shot itself in the
foot with this scenario, and it is time to lift the ban.

With or without "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass," the
same rules apply to everyone: No sex in the combat zone (gay or straight -
prosecute them both), and no unwanted sexual advances or harassment.

Sgt. Cristina Frisby
Forward Operating Base 
Speicher, Iraq

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That which is considered "taboo" during peacetime is "tolerated" during
times of conflict, at least until you get home, at which time you are no
longer considered "retainable" and are consequently drummed out of the
service along with your broken limbs and absence of benefits resulting from
a general discharge.

Question:  Of those 58,287 names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall, how many
belong to gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

Take care, Moscow.

Tom "Straight but not Narrow" Hansen 
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 
 
--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.