Tinne's Notes

News Break
06/21/2004 07:09:43 EST Gregory Smith/AP Photo
Soldier Dismissed After Revealing He's Gay
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, 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 and Iraq. 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.

This article drives me nuts and angers me beyond belief. Who's freedom are they protecting it's not Americans, because that implies ALL Americans including gay ones, so they must be fighting for straight Americans so does that mean that only straight people are American? Hell I think they would let a guy who fucks their goat fight in a war before they would the gay community, for the mere fact no one would believe him. I live near an Army base and I know a lot of shit that goes on in the military and the funny thing is all the straight soldiers can have as many affairs as they want to on their wives and or husbands they can do anything they want but the gay personal can't be themselves. I would think that cheating is a threat to the "readiness" or someone who is constantly dealing with their life and all the fuck ups in it and leaving their posts over seas is a threat to "readiness" but no that isn't being who you are is. You really have to love the mentality of the military be all your told to be and nothing more or you will be discharged.

It is okay to send our children off to war but not our gay men and women? It is okay to send an 18 year old child to their death but not homosexuals who are willing to die for freedoms we don't even have! There are people that people hate, fighting for the right to your freedom or oil take your pick I don't think it really matters anymore why just that our family members are dying. Gay people that are fighting and dying for rights that we do not have and you want to sit there and bitch about how wrong and immoral it is to be gay, yet we fight for things we don't have we do not judge you, yet you judge us now take a good hard look at who truly is being immoral.

Grow up people and realize that we are all human and need to just get along, because life is to short and in the end we all die so why not live in peace for once in our pathetic little existences? People want peace but don't have the balls to face what will give us peace, the truth that we are all human and that is as simple as it gets. And in the words of Amy Ray:

"I'm okay if I don't look a little closer

I'm okay if I don't see beyond the shore

I'm okay if I don't have to do the killing

or know what the killing is for...

and in this moment we are beholden to what it cost, to what it takes for one perfect world.

Can we learn to live another way?"

Peace,

Tinne

Mother Earth

This is what we fight for, the beauty that surrounds us!!!