Dumbasses!!!!! From the AJC, reposted to avoid that stupid form:
Difficult decision for gay soldier
Atlantan among 770 discharged last year
Ron Martz – Staff
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Brian Muller of Atlanta did not have to tell anyone in the Army he is gay.
Under the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy he could have continued to serve his country as a bomb technician dismantling explosive devices as long as he kept his homosexuality to himself.
“I knew the lines not to cross and I didn’t, even though I pushed them to the limit,” Muller, 25, said Tuesday as he recounted his eight-year Army career.
But after more than nine months in Afghanistan, the former staff sergeant who also served three tours in Bosnia decided to admit his sexual orientation to his commander. He had had enough of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.
The result was a quick, but honorable, discharge from the Army in which he once planned to make a career.
“It hurts to come back [from Afghanistan] and be told it doesn’t matter what I did in the military. It doesn’t count, because I’m gay,” said Muller, who was discharged last November.
Muller is one of 770 service members discharged in 2003 for homosexuality, according to a study released this week.
That number is down significantly from the record 1,227 discharged in 2001 before the start of the war on terrorism. Since the policy was implemented in late 1993, more than 9,500 service members have been discharged.
Loss of specialists
What is troubling about Muller’s discharge, say gay rights advocates, is that his expertise and that of many other service members discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell” cannot easily be replaced.
That is especially true, they say, at a time when the military is extending the enlistments of many active, reserve and National Guard personnel because of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Between 1998 and 2003, many of those discharged were in highly technical or specialized fields that require years of training, according to the study by the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military.
Among those discharged were 88 linguists, seven of them Arab language specialists, 49 nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialists, 90 nuclear power engineers and 150 rocket and missile specialists.
The results of the study “should be an outrage to most Americans who value national security and military readiness above simple discrimination,” said Steve Ralls, a spokesman for the Washington-based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which assists gay and lesbian military personnel.
The Pentagon maintains that allowing those who are openly gay and lesbian in the military would disrupt unit cohesion.
Under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, gays are allowed to serve as long as they keep their sexual orientation secret and don’t engage in homosexual acts.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, which opposes gays in the military, said those discharged should not have been in those sensitive jobs.
“There is no shortage of people in the military, and we do not need people who identify themselves as homosexual,” she said.
‘At peace’ with choice
Muller, who was born in Albuquerque, N.M., but whose family now lives in Ozark, Ark., said he knew for some time he was gay but did not admit it to himself until he had been in the Army about 4 1/2 years.
He initially enlisted as a cavalry scout and served in Bosnia with the 1st Armored Division. He later switched to explosives ordnance disposal, or bomb technician.
Before deploying to Afghanistan in October 2002, Muller spent time at President Bush’s Texas ranch as part of a security detail. He had top-secret clearance and worked with the Secret Service to sweep areas for explosive devices prior to the arrival of the president.
“A lot of careers in the military, you’re out there to take lives. Our job was to save lives,” Muller said.
After his discharge from the military, Muller came to Atlanta for vacation, liked what he saw and decided to stay.
He has dabbled in local politics and now works as a salesman for an auto dealership.
He has also become vice president of the fledgling Georgia chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights and on Sunday will be a member of the color guard in the Pride Parade that is part of the four-day celebration of gay pride in Atlanta.
Muller said he is at peace with himself and his decision to leave the military and the job he loved. But he said there are many others like him in the military who are still struggling with the policy.
The fact that they are homosexual should not make a difference in how the military views them, he said. “All we want is to serve our country and do our jobs.”
Freakchylde's 
Muller knew the rules, knew what would happen if he “crossed the line”. He knew the rule is stupid, his C.O. knew the rule was stupid. He chose a path, the rule did its thing, everyone’s kinda sad about it, but that’s what happens when you’ve got rules. You still follow them.
The quote you pull out serves only to show exactly what maintains those kinds of rules.
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Actually, the quote I’m pulling out is an example of a delusion. If there were enough people in the military to restrict those who “might” be gay to non-specialized jobs, then they wouldn’t be issueing stop-loss orders to people who’s contracts are running up, or calling back those that are retired. Not to mention the use of National Guard troops to relieve reservists. My point, if you’re going to issue discharges to people because of their sexuality, don’t bitch about the fact that you don’t have enough people (especially in regards to linguists). Every recruiter I know, will disagree with Ms. Donnelly’s assessment that there are enough people in the military.
Yes, it’s an order. However, I don’t see the “don’t ask, don’t tell” being extended to heterosexuals. Which, in all fairness, should be applied across the board, not just to a certain segment of the military population.–My opinion.
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Actually, the quote I’m pulling out is an example of a delusion.
Erg… yes. That’s where I was going with that; it’s held in place by people who display an irrational concern for the sex life of military personnel making a lot of noise and thereby convincing decision-makers that there was a problem. The CMR website stops just short of foaming about soldiers having impure thoughts contaminates their precious bodily fluids. Their entire priority system is skewed.
My feeling is that DA-DT was intended to be a temporary measure, to give the military an opportunity and time to gracefully retire a segment of COs who felt similarly to the CMR organization. That kind of awareness hadn’t been specifically selected against in choosing for promotion yet, and adding a filter doesn’t immediately make everything beyond as if the filter had always been there. DA-DT instituted as a policy seemed geared to buffer people from that segment of leadership while the military got their command chain as free of sexuality-biased decision-making as could reasonably happen, a process that would take signifigant amounts of time. It takes up to 30 years for a filter based on retirement to work, and DA-DT at least meant that those being filtered out of the command chain were allowed given the opportunity to get used to not paying attention to such things. For some people, (obviously, in CMR’s case) not caring what someone else does with his or her genitals seems to be learned behaviour and the stupid rule exists to allow time for that to be learned.
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Very much agreed. Now that women are more readily accepted, I find they’re going to need more time to situate themselves to that. Unfortunately, it’s now a bum-rush for everyone and the miliary can’t keep up with everyone at once.
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The bum-rush is indeed there, but DA-DT at least kind of allow people that want to stay in the military more than they want to self-identify with their orientation at least can can stay soldiers. It’s an unjust dilemma, but it’s arguably less of an injustice that periodic investigations.
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