Unqualified Offerings

Last month Kevin Drum and I, among others, wrote about the discovery of a 1999 FORSCOM regulation authorizing the deployment of service members who “confess” homosexuality to combat zones. It wasn’t obvious what to make of the regulation at the time. On the one hand, we had figures showing that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discharges peaked in 2001 and have dropped since the military moved to a war footing. On the other hand, we had plenty of examples of service members being kicked out of the military for homosexuality, even from war zones. So it was an open question whether the 1999 policy had actually been implemented.

Now Lou Chibbaro Jr of the Washington Blade gets on-the-record confirmation from a FORSCOM spokesman that it has:

The spokesperson, Kim Waldron, a civilian who works for the U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Ga., said the active duty deployment of Reservists and National Guard troops who say they are gay, or who are accused of being gay, takes place under a Forces Command or “FORSCOM” regulation issued in 1999.

Waldron said the regulation is aimed at preventing Reservists and National Guard members from using their sexual orientation — or from pretending to be gay — to escape combat.

You might call this the “Corporal Klinger Rule,” but the policy doesn’t care whether you’re lying about your orientation. You can really be “queer, queer, queer, with bells ringing and banners snapping in the wind” and get sent to war.

Let’s pause to remember the ostensible reason for the policy. Now, Chibbaro’s reporting again:

“What this document shows is that someone within the armed forces who wrote it felt that gays could serve during wartime without disrupting morale and unit cohesion,” Ralls said, in discussing the FORSCOM regulation. “That is a very significant development.”

One would think. Worth pausing to consider a few of the hypocrisies and cruelties of the policy. You get sent to war, but you can still be discharged for your sexuality once you get home. The implication of the policy is that you’re more likely to get discharged if you keep quiet and some investigator or tipster outs you - e.g. by finding your personals ad, which constitutes “telling” - than if you come right out and say you’re . . . “that way.” That is, real telling is more likely to keep you in the service (while the bullets fly) than fake “telling.” Also, the 1999 FORSCOM reg is a Guard and Reserve rule, so the policy is not uniform between reserves and regular military.

Also, if you’re a gay American who wants to continue serving your country, you want to figure out how to spoof telepaths:

“It does not say you have to be lying about your sexual orientation,” Wilson said. As long as military officials determine that a service member is invoking the gay conduct policy to avoid service, she said, the [original] DOD regulation [which predates FORSCOM 1999 and is consistent with it] gives commanders the discretion to waive the discharge policy — at least until after a service member completes his deployment.

So the Department of Defense wants to get rid of homosexuals who want to serve and keep the ones who don’t. They are our shock troops in the War Against the Mirror People, perhaps.