if you are not "straight" you are not good enough to kill or be killed.
"we" don't want no commie ****gots, or bull dykes serving to protect our "pure" wasp america, and if they don't like it they can go back to russia or where ever they come from. i say hang em all, they violate "god's" will. i ain't homophobic, i'm just following the teachings of the "good book."
Soldier Dismissed After Revealing He's Gay
Mon Jun 21, 8:09 AM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - Brian Muller, an Army bomb squad team leader who served on a security
detail for President Bush (news - web sites), said he was dismissed from duty after deciding to tell
his commander he's gay.
"I didn't do it to get out of a war — I already served in a war," Muller, 25, said in an interview. "After
putting my life on the line in the war, the idea that I was fighting for the freedoms of so many other
people that I couldn't myself enjoy was almost unbearable."
The exodus of soldiers like Muller continues even as concerns grow about military troop strength,
according to a new study. Some 770 people were discharged for homosexuality last year under
the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The figure, however, is significantly lower than the record 1,227 discharges in 2001 — just before
the invasions of Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites). Since "don't ask,
don't tell" was adopted in 1994, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged —
including linguists, nuclear warfare experts and other key specialists.
The statistics, obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center and analyzed by the Center for
the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California at Santa Barbara, offers
a detailed profile of those discharged, including job specialty, rank and years spent in the service.
"The justification for the policy is that allowing gays and lesbians to serve would undermine
military readiness," said Aaron Belkin, author of the study, which will be released Monday. "For the
first time, we can see how it has impacted every corner of the military and goes to the heart of the
military readiness argument."
"Don't ask, don't tell" allows gays to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual
orientation private and do not engage in homosexual acts.
The study, which analyzed discharges between 1998 and 2003, found the majority of those let go
under "don't ask, don't tell" were active duty enlisted personnel in the early stages of their careers.
Of the nearly 6,300 people discharged during that six-year period, only 75 were officers. Seventy-
one percent of those discharged were men.
The study found that the Army, the largest of the services, was responsible for about 41 percent of
all discharges. About 27 percent of the discharges came from the Navy, 22 percent from the Air
Force, and 9 percent from the Marines.
Hundreds of those discharged held high-level job specialties that required years of training and
expertise, including 90 nuclear power engineers, 150 rocket and missile specialists and 49
nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare specialists.
Eighty-eight linguists were discharged, including at least seven Arab language specialists.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative advocacy group that opposes
gays serving in the military, said the loss of gays and lesbians serving in specialized areas is
irrelevant because they never should have been in those jobs in the first place.
"We need to defend the law, and the law says that homosexuality is incompatible with military
service," Donnelly said. "There is no shortage of people in the military, and we do not need people
who identify themselves as homosexual."
There are currently about 1.5 million people serving in active duty in the military, and another 1
million in the Reserves
