An email worth sharing:
I am a retired US Army officer.
The de facto policy in the military has always been that you never run a “witch hunt” after a really good soldier who keeps it out of the barracks.-“Witch hunts’ went after the women for the most part because lesbians for some reason were much more likely to be in the barracks than male homosexuals, who would take it off-post.
When I was a kid sergeant in the 101st Airborne, working on air movement, one of the most important people around was the division air-movement NCO.-This guy knew more about loading US Army equipment on US Air Force aircraft than anyone.-If he said if was rigged right, it was right– even the Air Force called him for rulings.-But if he said it was wrong – no arguing, no appeal – your stuff wouldn’t get on the airplane.
The first time I had to take paperwork to him, my platoon sergeant called me aside and said, “DeeTee, this guy is the biggest fag you’ve ever seen.-But you better make him a happy fag.”-Platoon Daddy was right – the guy was a mincing flamer – but he knew everything.-I watched him chew out officers and senior NCOs right and left who had their paperwork examined ahead of me.-And I was really proud when it was my turn and he praised me and my unit in a very loud voice for knowing what the real deal was.
Several years later, as a young lieutenant, the company command and I had our best clerk come into the office and say that he wanted a discharge because he was queer. We told him, bullshit, we’ve seen your hippie chick girlfriend.- He fell back on, well, I’m bisexual.- We told him no you aren’t – you just want to get out of the Army, go to college, screw, and smoke dope.-We made him a deal – stay on through the summer (while we prepared for our annual general inspection), and then when college classes start in the fall, we’ll give you a homosexual discharge if that’s what you still want.-He said OK.
Two weeks later, our worst clerk got busted for driving under the influence.-His lawyer called us saying that his client was just being prosecuted because he was black, and that he’d told him that we had a notorious queer we were protecting. We were, of course, shocked, shocked, to get this news.-On his own confession, we discharged our best clerk in 48 hours.-It took over three months, and repeated incidents of misbehavior to get rid of our worst.
The Dish 