Many troops openly gay, group says

Source: USA Today

Army Sgt. Darren Manzella figured that stating he was gay on national television would surely get him booted from the military under the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

But Manzella has heard nothing in the three weeks since he told CBS' 60 Minutes that his fellow soldiers knew he was gay and the program aired a home video that showed him kissing a former boyfriend.

"I thought I would at least be asked about the segment or approached and told I shouldn't speak to the media again," says Manzella, 30, a medic who recently returned from Kuwait and plans to hold a news conference today in Washington to discuss the military's silence.

He says he is among a growing number of servicemembers who have told other troops and even commanders they are gay and have not been discharged.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay advocacy group, says it knows of about 500 gay troops who are serving openly without consequences. "That's the highest number we've ever been aware of," says SLDN spokesman Steve Ralls. "Their experiences point to an undeniable shift in the armed forces."

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-01-07-gay-troops_N.htm

but there still remains a good deal of fear of attack (and not without cause)

experiences are probably individual.

some are out --- others extremely fearful if not downright threatened.

all this points out is that gay folk can and do exist -- in the open -- in the military -- and ''unit cohesion'' doesn't come flying apart at the seams -- except in the minds of the haters.

in the mean time -- my brothers and sisters -- why oh why the military?
i don't get it -- talk about being surrounded by a population who will never really love you -- and the whole ethical dilema of being in the military to begin with.

oh well not my life -- and i will always support my brothers and sisters.

I mean, look at the proportion of men to women! But seriously though, teenage recruits don't have a very developed world view. I wouldn't join the military now, but when I was young I thought it was the coolest.

indesisiveness.

women aside -- there is a conversation re: gay men and masculinity that is simmering beneath the surface.
just a whole men's universe thing we need to discuss.
we are not heteronormative -- and neither marriage nor the army will make us so.

we need to talk about it -- write about it etc.

does any of that make sense?

...and the military recruiters take advantage of that desire.

Ok, there is a Wikipedia entry for heteronormative, now *that* part makes sense.

that never served a day of their pathetic life in a uniform!

obviously gay men and straight men are friends outside of the military -- why wouldn't we be in the military?

Canadian Armed Forces - 1973

Discharged gay sailor is called back to active duty

:eyes:
rocknation

deny him benefits because he "lied" to them about who he is.

*sigh*

is a medic, so he is safe. NObody in the medic's company is going to do shit to someone who is charged with saving their life.

:rofl: :rofl: :hi:

I predict we will see a "plague" of homosexuality sweep over our middle eastern bases. Just ours, not our allies or host nations.

which is unfortunate because I was going to play that card when they institute the draft.

a couple of months before a ship would deploy, the admin discharges on grounds of Homosexual tendencies sky rocketed. Admitting to tendiencies but not to acts while in the service got you discharged with what ever your service record would support. Knew several guys that got honorable discharges while being thrown out of the Navy.

If there are around 65,OOO gays/lesbians in military, 12,000 seems to be a very a high percentage thrown out since 1993 due to DADT, even though the number of dismissals has been declining in recent years, since its hard to attract people, even heterosexuals, into the military these days.

The more sisters & brothers who speak up the better.

If they all come out en masse and break the vow of silence, this absurd & hateful DADT simply could not remain on the books. How could they enforce it? How could they kick 65,000 people out of the military in one fell swoop at a time when nobody wants to join?

Does anyone want to bet that this isn't the practice?

Nobody cared - until 1946. Then suddenly they became "a danger to morale" and were involuntarily discharged.

The people running things do whatever they want and justify it by saying whatever they want. Truth or even consistency don't come into it.

... in response to a request from General Eisenhower that she ferret out the lesbians in her battalion:

Yessir. If the General pleases I will be happy to do this investigation…. But, sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name is going to head the list…. You should also be aware that you're going to have to replace all the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool…. I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the General himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment.

General Eisenhower: Forget the order.

~Bunny MacCulloch interview with Johnnie Phelps, 1982

http://lavenderbutnotpink.com/gcmilitary.html

The story of "Johnnie" Phelps and her encounter with General Eisenhower is just that: a story. She was a WW-2 WAC, served for two years during the war, and was honorably discharged in late 1945 as a corporal. Her service was entirely in the USA (no overseas service either in European or the Pacific Theaters). She reenlisted in 1946; after several months in the USA she was assigned to Frankfurt, Germany in October. In February 1947 she returned to the USA for hospitalization. She was returned to duty in the fall and discharged honorably again (and for the last time) as a corporal in May 1948. General Eisenhower left Germany to become the Army chief of staff in November 1945. He was long gone before Phelps briefly served in Germany! Phelps' records can obtained from the National Archives. Her name was Nell Louise Phelps; her army serial number was A-410913.

Thanks for the information & the research. I saw her in Before Stonewall and she certainly fooled me.

It makes me even angrier knowing that Mr Berube passed away late last year.

There are probably a great many of you who know of others who have been affected by this phony rule against having a Lesbian or Gay soldier. I know of some, and left the ROTC before becoming an officer specifically because of this rule. The book below should be required reading for our military and political leaders so they can be aware of the sacrifices and courage of our LGBT soldiers, and know how they have contributed to harming the strength of our armed forces.


Book:
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Under-Fire-Allan-Berube/dp/0743210719

Documentary based on the book:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109462/

Description from Deep Focus Productions:

Coming Out Under Fire features nine gay and lesbian veterans who recount how they joined the patriotic war against fascism in the 1940s only to find themselves fighting two battles: one for their country and another for their right to serve. They first remember warm and entertaining stories of finding each other in a compulsory heterosexual environment and reminisce over tales of first love and deep friendships. Their good times were short-lived, however, as they became targets of newly created anti-homosexual policies which called for witch hunts, dehumanizing interrogations, involuntary psychiatric treatments, and the incarceration of suspected homosexuals into "queer stockades." The final humiliation was a dishonorable discharge which stripped a soldier of all veterans benefits as well as being officially branded a "sex pervert" for life.

Coming Out Under Fire is based on the ground-breaking book by MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, Allan Bérubé, and integrates compelling on-camera interviews with declassified military documents and archival footage on sex education, mental health, prison compounds, and court martial hearings. It probes the origins of the military's anti-homosexual policy to document how pseudo-psychiatry, erroneous medical theory, and misplaced ethics masked a policy based on nothing short of prejudice. Coming Out Under Fire concludes with riveting scenes from 1993 U.S. Senate hearings which expose how the American government continues to justify and reaffirm it's 50-year-old system for persecuting homosexual service personnel. The final outcome: today's Congressionally mandated "don't ask, don't tell" compromise only serves to perpetuate the real problem -- bigotry and the continued violation of gay and lesbian civil rights.

Complete description here:
http://www.deepfocusproductions.com/page_html/film_COUF0.html

1953
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which mandated "sexual perverts" be fired from federal jobs.

In 1950, the Undersecretary of State revealed that the majority of dismissals for State Department employees were based on accusations of homosexuality. Over the next few months, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other conservatives accused the Truman Administration of a laxity of rooting out homosexuals in government. Bowing to the pressure, the Civil Service Commission focused its efforts to locate and dismiss lesbians and gay men working in government.

After months of controversy, the US Senate authorized a wide-ranging investigation of homosexuals working in national government. The Senate Committee recommended that stringent measures be taken to root out all lesbians and gays out of government. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower signed an Executive Order mandating the dismissal of all federal employees determined to be homosexual.

This was at the height of the McCarthy era, and homosexuals were one of the primary targets of the Nation's hysteria.

After World War II, the American Psychiatric Community labeled homosexuality a mental illness and lobotomies for homosexuality were being regularly performed in the United States.

In 1953, Dr. Evelyn Hooker applied to the National Institutes of Health for a grant to study gay men. Just securing a government grant on this controversial topic was a major accomplishment. The final paper, presented to the American Psychological Association in 1956 presented findings that gay men were as well adjusted as straight men. It took another 20 years of work by Dr. Hooker and other psychologists to drop homosexuality as a mental disease.

Other psychologists were convinced lesbian and gay men could be cured through various techniques ....

http://cowboyfrank.net/archive/ComingOut/02.htm

More background with lots of pics at this site.