Tomorrow, September 20, 2021, is an important anniversary.

When World War II broke out and troops were needed, the military added psychiatric screening to its induction process with Homosexuality as a disqualifying trait and helped promote false assumptions about Homosexuals by establishing a division between “normal” recruits and those with psychological problems, the “abnormal” ones.

The historical records showed instances of punishing soldiers for Homosexual acts going back to the Continental Army under George Washington, but this addition to the procedures was not connected to any action, just a person’s being.

Since WWII, The Big One, and to a certain extent before, in times where the country was not at war, Gay service members were court-martialed, imprisoned, and dishonorably discharged losing any benefits they had earned. However, during wartime when soldiers were needed in great numbers, the military’s standard method for handling Gay and Lesbian personnel by issuing the Blue Discharge that called for Homosexuals to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists and discharged under Regulation 615–360, section 8 was often overlooked to keep the numbers up.

Fans of MASH saw an example of this regulation weekly in the character of Klinger a draftee who cross dressed to appear Gay enough for discharge.

With the Blue Discharge, if a serviceman or woman was determined to be Gay, even if they had not committed any sexual acts while in service, they would get an “undesirable” discharge while engaging in sexual conduct meant getting “dishonorably” discharged in spite of your actual performance in uniform.

Those dishonorably discharged under the old or new regulations were subjected to discrimination in civilian life as they were denied benefits by the Veterans Administration and the all-important GI Bill and, because employers were familiar with why a person was so discharged, finding decent employment was often difficult.

 Black veterans, finding themselves being similarly denied benefits like housing loans and education because they too were given Blue Discharges at the end of the war, were able to get this discharge ended in 1947 when it was replaced with “general” and “undesirable” discharges which simply renamed the type of discharge without removing the penalties and the effects in civilian life.   

After the renaming, the military discharged over 13,000 troops from the military with, of course, a slow down during the Vietnam Conflict. Then came the Twenty Years War after 9/11 and, not surprisingly, the number of discharges dropped sharply.

It is not my thing, but there are those on the full Gay spectrum who want to serve their country based on family tradition or personal beliefs in America and Democracy, so part of the Gay Rights Movement involving the attainment of full citizenship and the recognition of our rights as bestowed on us by our creator included an end to the military ban based as it was on perceptions, not facts, based on people’s religious and political beliefs and not much else.

During his campaign for president, Bill Clinton promised to do away with the ban on members of the Gay Community when it came to military service, but because the GOP declared a culture war with Gay people being a good pawn, he had to settle for a compromise.

On November 30, 1993, Don’t Ask/ Don’t Tell became the policy which, while it prohibited discriminating against and the harassing of closeted Homosexual service members or applicants, if a service member was openly Gay, they could be thrown out. People who “demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” were banned from service.

No action was necessary.

The reason that had been applied to every group out of the mainstream from racially integrating the armed forces and using military women as secretaries and donut distributors rather than the fighters they wanted to be was applied to openly Gay service member who, like Blacks and women were supposed to have done, but didn’t,

“would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”.

This claim was not backed up by any research. It was merely a claim that if repeated often enough would become the accepted truth in people’s minds.

During its existence the repeal of DADT was often opposed by some and supported by others.

Retired General Carl E. Mundy claimed,

“Conduct that is widely rejected by a majority of Americans can undermine the trust that is essential to creating and maintaining the sense of unity that is critical to the success of a military organization operating under the very different and difficult demands of combat.”

In 2000, the Republican Party Platform declared,

“We affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”

Meanwhile the American Psychological Association asserted that,

“Empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention.”

So if your diet discount levitra http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/05/18/uncensored-featuring-kristina-montuori-roanoke-va-sun-may-19-7pm/ is high on fat content it’s just natural to expect you will gain confidence, that helps in making your personal life better. Many factors such as work stress, stress in family relationships, or sometimes the stress of midlife transitions ” drown men in generic viagra cheap depression. You may ask how view here viagra india prices to produce more HGH that in turn increases testosterone. Other uses of KamagraLeisure useSildenafil citrate present in Sildamax has become the recommended ED treatment.It order generic cialis Click Here is similar to the reputed one.

To which the GOP responded,

“We affirm traditional military culture, and we affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”

They wanted it to be true and, so, declared it so.

Under Don’t Ask/ Don’t Tell, Gays and Lesbians could serve so long as they did not tell, which meant disclosing their sexual orientation in word or deed even among military friends and speaking about any same-sex relationships.

Again, the spoken word was enough with no sexual act required to get the discharge.

The acceptance of Guy Talk and locker room language was limited to heterosexuality. A Straight soldier could regale the barracks with the raunchiest story of a sexual encounter, but even mentioning you kissed someone of the same sex was wrong and you would be discharged except, as I mentioned above, if it was when a large number of soldiers was needed, as in a war  because a discharge then “would not be in the best interest of the armed forces.”

For their part, ranking officers were not to initiate an investigation of a service member’s orientation without witnessing any behaviors and applicants could not be asked about their orientation. The default assumption was that every applicant was straight and that made for a comfortable lie. If, on the other hand, anyone said something whether it was the person him or herself or someone else who was suspicious, they could proceed with an investigation.

After 17 years of fighting this policy with many legal suits filed by those wrongfully discharged, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certifying that repealing DADT would not harm military readiness, and because of a ruling from a federal appeals court, the barring of any further enforcement of the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay service members came on December 22, 2010.

We were 9 years into what would become a twenty-year’s war, and cannon fodder was needed.

Along with the Obama administration, the Joint Chiefs set the end of DADT for September 20, 2011 so that adjustments could be made and those who chose not to serve with Gay people could make arrangements to avoid it including resigning, and because they saw an obvious need to educate the troops, with Gay ones in the room who could still be discharged up to the September date, about the facts as opposed accepted assumptions.  

And, let’s be honest, most of the adjusting was basically allowing biased members of the military to get used to the idea, and the US Marines, whose uniform was designed by a Gay man, became the poster child of opposition and the fear of cartoon Homosexuals.

One of the objections to the repeal had come from a position paper authored by a Marine Corps chaplain asserting that

“In the unique, intensely close environment of the military, homosexual conduct can threaten the lives, including the physical (e.g. AIDS) and psychological well-being of others”.

This was to become the go to excuse for objecting to the repeal, but it was actually an early example of what social media became, the supplier of personal opinions as if they were indisputable passed on to those and among those who would instantly accept it without question as it supported an already arrived at, even if sinfully flawed, belief.

The Marines later became the first branch of the military to actively recruit Gays and Lesbians.

There was a bogey man coming, and the military needed time to compose itself and adjust to reality and juggle certain policies and practices as same sex couples who were legally married in their home states were still, at that time, outside of the federal Defense of Marriage act and so their full participation in some military policies and practices, like housing and family benefits, was prevented.

Think States legalizing marijuana while it is still against federal law which allows for selective enforcement.

There were some attempts to get around this denial in certain places, but these became unnecessary when the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Windsor which made Same Sex marriages legal nationally making the application of certain military benefits universal, regardless of sexual orientation.

And now it has been ten years and all the horror that was supposed to ensue, like those with integration and women serving equally, again, did not happen.

As before, Gays continue to serve in the military as they have always done, but now they do not have to deny themselves to do it.

.

.

.

.

.