Gay soldier may be discharged

Syracuse – A military administrative board recommended on Tuesday that a National Guard officer who publicly announced he was gay should be discharged for violating the military’s policy against homosexual conduct.

Lieutenant Dan Choi would be the first New York National Guard member discharged for violating the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Fanning, a spokesperson for the New York Army National Guard, said.

Choi, 28, appeared here before a Federal Recognition Board, a panel of four military officers, which deliberated for four hours before deciding to recommend the army no longer recognise him as an officer.

Choi, a combat veteran who on Sunday was a celebrity grand marshal in San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade, said it amounted to firing him “for nothing more than telling the truth about who I am”. See Gay soldier may be discharged

Independent Online

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Ex-fighter pilot listens to feminine voice he’d tried to ignore

Darlene Fike shifts in a chocolate brown recliner seated on a heating pad in a small two-story apartment near the University of Memphis and recounts her life.

It hasn’t been long since the last remnants of Darlene’s manhood were surgically removed, and she’s sore.

Bronzed baby shoes that would fit a boy or girl sit near the television along with a picture of a mother and little boy in a sailor suit.

Darlene, 58, gingerly climbed the stairs to use the bathroom, past a framed box of ribbons and medals, military honors presented to David, the man she used to be.

Two years ago, David, a retired Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel who served as a navigator and fighter pilot, told his wife, Mary, something he’d kept inside all his life. He was a woman in a man’s body.

See Ex-fighter pilot listens to feminine voice he’d tried to ignore

Memphis Commercial Appeal

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