Gay Veteran Gets Honorable Discharge Six Des After Gettg Kicked Out of Army

Contents:

• GAY VETERAN GETS HONORABLE DISCHARGE SIX DES AFTER GETTG KICKED OUT OF ARMY
• MILARY VETERANS KICKED OUT FOR BEG GAY STILL FIGHTG FOR HONORABLE DISCHARG
• OTED AS GAY, AGG VETERANS ARE BATTLG AGA FOR HONORABLE DISCHARG

GAY VETERAN GETS HONORABLE DISCHARGE SIX DES AFTER GETTG KICKED OUT OF ARMY

At the time, gay troops weren't allowed the ary.

But two years to his enlistment, Steffanis got spotted at a gay bar near his base. "They cut my locker open and found some gay magaz, " he says.

Not only was agast the ary regulatns, gay sex was still illegal Virgia, and many other stat. "They threw me the brig, put me on bread and water — was huiatg --for beg gay, " says Steffanis.

MILARY VETERANS KICKED OUT FOR BEG GAY STILL FIGHTG FOR HONORABLE DISCHARG

" As long as they kept secret, gay and lbian troops uld serve. Rumors sprouted about how he wasn't datg women or had reported on others for g homophobic slurs. In the years sce, the tegratn of gay and lbian troops has been herald as a huge succs wh no effects on un hn or bat reads, acrdg to the Pentagon.

At the time was uncharted terrory, and Alexanr, by then a litenant lonel, sat a room full of senr officers talkg about how to handle gay service members. "I said, you know what, 'I'm a gay service member, ' " he said.

Alexanr's first project was wh the San Francis-based veterans chary Swords to Plowshar, tryg to help gay veterans wh other-than-honorable discharg. "I put up flyers all over the Bay Area the gay bars, plac I knew that the LGBTQ veterans would equent. And that's where he met Stephan Steffanis, 20 years sce his discharge om the Navy for beg gay.

OTED AS GAY, AGG VETERANS ARE BATTLG AGA FOR HONORABLE DISCHARG

“Unsirable” behavr—specifilly, an accatn of “attemptg to perpetrate an act of Homosexualy, ” as he explaed a letter to the Natnal Associatn for the Advancement of Colored People, om whom he was seekg legal help.

” A the top rner of the notice explaed the reason for the discharge—“HS, ” for stance, meant the person was nsired a homosexual. ” Wh WWII’s massive human mobilizatn, the ary shifted om s practice of jailg soldiers acced of homosexualy (which required time-nsumg, expensive urt-martials) to simply emg them psychologilly unf.

Acrdg to Jon, the NAACP worked wh Black service members acced of homosexualy, like Lemuel Brown, to appeal to the Discharge Review Board for a changed stat—ually wh ltle succs. READ MORE: The Supreme Court Rulgs That Have Shaped Gay Rights Ameri‘Scientific’ Attempts to Intify HomosexualsIn their effort to screen out queer nscripts, ary officials ran to a problem: They didn’t have a nclive way of intifyg them, beyond a set of subjectively terpreted “signs” such as “feme bodily characteristics” and “effemacy drs and manner, ” acrdg to Allan Bébé, thor of Comg Out Unr Fire: Gay Men and Women Durg World War II.

Durg World War II, out of some 18 ln potential enliste, the ary only intified between 4, 000 and 5, 000 homosexuals, a severe unrunt, timat Bébé. In 1944, acrdg to Bébé, an Army doctor tted tongue prsors on patients who were beg treated as “sexual psychopaths”—one of the terms for homosexuals. Their ncln: 89 percent of homosexual patients who had performed oral sex the past didn’t have a gag reflex.

The doctor proclaimed that a tongue prsor tt uld screen out gay people not jt om ary service, but om other feral agenci as doctors began explorg whether they uld diagnose homosexualy—through Rorschach tts or by measurg sexualy through hormone tts. (One Army psychiatrist theorized that homosexual men would show higher levels of trogen than ttosterone—and lbians the reverse.

) None of the theori panned part bee of the difficulti of scientifilly measurg queerns, the War Department January 1944 began to allow discharg on the basis of “latent homosexualy. ” That gave officials license to eject someone for homosexualy unr the blue discharge system simply bee they seemed gay—even if the ary lacked MORE: How LGBT Civil Servants Beme Public Enemy No. 1 the 1950sBrief Reform, Followed by the ‘Lavenr Sre’Bettmann Archive/Getty Imag<em>Gay rights picketers prottg outsi of the Whe Hoe, 1965.

The send man the le walkg forward is gay rights activist Frank Kameny. The report also cricized the Veterans Admistratn for blockg homosexuals om receivg G.

Between late 1945 through 1947, soldiers removed om the armed forc for homosexualy received discharg unr honorable ndns, makg them eligible for G. But the policy wasn’t retroactive, meang that thoands who had already received a blue discharge for homosexualy were still nied benefs. And at the end of 1947, the ary reverted back to dismissg homosexuals unr ambiguoly honorable ndns.

”The Cold War hered a new gay panic, reversg those reforms. In this creasgly hostile climate, soldiers who had received blue discharg for homosexualy had their hop for reform dashed.

In total, between World War II and 2011, when the ary’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law was repealed, at least 100, 000 more soldiers were removed for homosexualy. Among them was Harvey Milk, a Korean War veteran who went on to bee the first openly gay polil official the Uned MORE: For Centuri, Blackmail Was a Tool Used to Intimidate Gay Men. Ary agast gay and lbian service members, revealg that more than 29, 000 dividuals kicked out bee of their sexualy were nied honorable have long been timat suggtg about 14, 000 service members were separated om the ary unr "don't ask, don't tell, " the policy that banned gay men and women om servg openly om 1994 to 2011, but the ary has never before shared a tailed breakdown of how many dividuals were nied honorable discharg durg and before "don't ask, don't tell, " when gays and lbians were prohibed om servg at all.