No Log Cabins in the military
Quote of note:
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.
Key military specialists discharged under 'don't ask, don't tell'
- BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, June 20, 2004
(06-20) 23:20 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --
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.
