White paper: More than 10,000 discharged under “don’t ask” since 1994 (via AMERICAblog)
Hundreds of officers and health care professionals have been discharged in the past 10 years under the Pentagon’s policy on gays, a loss that while relatively small in numbers involves troops who are expensive for the military to educate and train…. [M]any were military school graduates or service members who went to medical school at the taxpayers’ expense - troops not as easily replaced by a nation at war that is struggling to fill its enlistment quotas.
Hey, c’mon now…no one said that it was going to cheap or easy to purify the American military, right? Persecution, or as we prefer, making the ranks safe for good, God-fearing, heterosexuals, is not a pleasant or painless process. Those of you pussies who thought that “Don’t ask, don’t tell” meant a new era of tolerance in the military culture should feel free to remove your anteriors from your posteriors. Yes, in an era when our military is being stretched to it’s limit by the never-ending war on terror, it just makes good sense to redouble our righteous efforts to save our brave men and women in uniform from Da Gayz. After all, would you want your son or daughter in a foxhole next to one??
Yep, once we get rid of Da Gayz, then we go to work ridding the military of non-Christians….
The 350 [officers and health care professionals]or so affected are a tiny fraction of the 1.4 million members of the uniformed services and about 3.5 percent of the more than 10,000 people discharged under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy since its inception in 1994….
“You don’t just go out on the street tomorrow and pluck someone from the general population who has an Air Force education, someone trained as a physician, someone who bleeds Air Force blue, who is willing to serve, and that you can put in Iraq tomorrow, said Beth Schissel, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989 and went on to medical school.
Schissel was forced out of the military after she acknowledged that she was gay.
According to figures compiled by the Pentagon and released by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, Schissel is one of 244 medical and health professionals discharged from 1994 through 2003 under the policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve as long as they abstain from homosexual activity and do not disclose their sexual orientation. Congress approved the policy in 1993.
Anyone who has been paying attention since 1993 recognizes that “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was simply a cover provided to allow people to feel as if the military would no longer engage in a witchhunt against gays and lesbians. Stay quiet, keep to yourself, stay in the closet, the argument went, and you’ll be just fine. The reality, however is that virtually nothing has changed. OK, so the military no longer “openly” engages in anti-gay witchhunts, but the end result is the same- many brave men and women who WANT to serve their country are denied the opportunity by a majority operating out of fear, prejudice, and just plain ignorance.
If someone wants to serve their country, and are ably and professionally performing their duties, why should it matter what they particular sexual predilection happens to be? Do gays and lesbians bleed differently? Are they somehow less worthy? And has anyone given ANY thought to just how much money taxpayers are forking over to maintain this reprehensible, institutionalized repression and discrimination? Surely, we’re better than this?
Uh…apparently not….
