From Queers To Convicts
Military Using Convicted Felons To Replace Gays
The Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy is driving homosexual servicemen and women out in droves only to be replaced by prisoners with criminal records.
With two soldiers being forced out of the armed services daily under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, both the Army and Marine Corp are looking for replacements. Where better to find them than the state prisons of the United States?
This past Monday, April 21, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released information stipulating that the number of soldiers with felony records has made several jumps over the past couple of years. The Army had 249 enlisted felons in 2006, but 511 in 2007; the 208 convicted Marines in 2006 jumped to 350 by the following year.
As 365gay.com reports, “The bulk of the crimes involved were burglaries, other thefts, and drug offenses, but nine involved sex crimes and six involved manslaughter or vehicular homicide convictions. Several dozen Army and Marine recruits had aggravated assault or robbery convictions, including incidents involving weapons.”
These are not exactly the type of people we want defending our country, to be sure. So are they better than their would-be homosexual counterparts?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Since the DADT policy was passed in 1993, over 10,000 soldiers have been discharged for homosexual activities or suspicion of such actions. At least 800 of these men and women had skills that were noted as ‘mission critical,’ including pilots, combat engineers and linguists. It is hard to believe that the several hundred prisoners taking their place knew how to fly an airplane, or were fluent in more than one language.
This is not new. Back in June of last year, Stephen Benjamin wrote an article for the New York Times about this very issue. “I was an Arabic translator. After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq,” he wrote almost a year ago. “But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay.”
The same happened to Benjamin’s roommate. “The result was the termination of our careers, and the loss to the military of two more Arabic translators. The 68 other — heterosexual — service members remained on active duty, despite many having committed violations far more egregious than ours; the Pentagon apparently doesn’t consider hate speech, derogatory comments about women or sexual misconduct grounds for dismissal.”
Unfortunately, because of the secrecy behind DADT, the statistics of how many LGBT persons turned away by military recruiters has not been documented.
Thousands of Ready Recruits
Marching forward to next November’s elections with legislation to repeal DADT before Congress bodes well for a change. With a war in Iraq waging on, even conservatives are beginning to agree that the policy should be removed. Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, told a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee and the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee last week, “The Army and Marine Corps cannot afford to place unnecessary obstacles in the way of qualified men and women who want to serve.”
As many as 41,000 new soldiers may well be interested in joining their brothers and sisters in protecting their country should DADT be overturned. If gay and lesbian military members were allowed to be open about their sexuality, it is possible that many would come out of the woodwork and fill the ranks of the ever-decreasing Army, Marines and Navy Corps.
