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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Experts Question Obama Plan to Consult Military on Gays, Consultations Could Backfire As In 1993
Some experts are questioning President Obama’s effort to consult with military leaders as he plans to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The AP reported today that Obama “has begun consulting his top defense advisers on how to lift a ban.” But Dr. Nathaniel Frank, author of a new book on the policy, says that “Last time political leaders consulted with the military on this issue, the brass still claimed they had not been consulted, and the result was a disaster. Remember, Clinton insisted he was consulting on how, not whether, to lift the ban, and even so, we got ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”
Frank’s new book presents never-reported evidence indicating that military officers who wrote the blueprint for “don’t ask, don’t tell” based the policy “on nothing” but their “own prejudices and fears.” The book, “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America,” which was released today, contains the largest collection of evidence showing openly gay service does not undermine military effectiveness. Frank is Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Last month, a retired Marine Corp General questioned a similar Obama administration proposal to study “don’t ask, don’t tell.” “There’s been enough studying throughout the years,” said General Hugh Aitken. “Creating a new study will not change the facts.”
The Palm Center is a research institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Center uses rigorous social science to inform public discussions of controversial social issues, enabling policy outcomes to be informed more by evidence than by emotion. Its data-driven approach is premised on the notion that the public makes wise choices on social issues when high-quality information is available. For more information, visit www.palmcenter.ucsb.edu.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/experts-quest…
