Army Sent Out Gay Soldiers To Iraq

Members of the Army Reserves and the National Guard who inform their commanders that they are gay are routinely converted into active duty status and sent to the Iraq war and other high priority military assignments, according to a spokesperson for an Army command charged with deploying troops.
The spokesperson, Kim Waldron, a civilian who works for the U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Ga., said the active duty deployment of Reservists and National Guard troops who say they are gay, or who are accused of being gay, takes place under a Forces Command or “FORSCOM” regulation issued in 1999.
Waldron said the regulation is aimed at preventing Reservists and National Guard members from using their sexual orientation — or from pretending to be gay — to escape combat.
“The bottom line is some people are using sexual orientation to avoid deployment,” Waldron said. “So in this case, with the Reserve and Guard forces, if a soldier ‘tells,’ they still have to go to war and the homosexual issue is postponed until they return to the U.S. and the unit is demobilized.”
Waldron was referring to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays, which Congress enacted into law in 1993. The policy states that gays may serve in the military as long as they do not disclose their sexual orientation.
Disclosure by a service member that he or she is gay, the policy states, constitutes evidence that the service member is likely to engage in “homosexual conduct,” which is prohibited under the anti-sodomy clause of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Waldron said the FORSCOM regulation doesn’t conflict with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because Department of Defense regulations that implemented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provide for a similar procedure for retaining service members who attempt to circumvent deployment by claiming they are gay.
from New York Blade