...The changes include:
-- Only a general or flag officer may separate an enlisted member believed at the conclusion of an investigation to have engaged in homosexual conduct. Under previous policy, a colonel -- or for a captain in the Navy and Coast Guard – could order separation.
-- A revision in what’s needed to begin an inquiry or a separation proceeding. Information provided by a third party now must be given under oath, “discouraging the use of overheard statements and hearsay,” Gates said.
-- Certain categories of confidential information -- such as information provided to lawyers, clergy and psychotherapists -- no longer will be used in support of discharges. Information provided to medical personnel in furtherance of treatment, or to a public-health official in the course of seeing professional assistance for domestic or physical abuse also is excluded, as well as information obtained in the process of security-clearance investigations, in accordance with existing Pentagon policies.
“These changes reflect some of the insights we have gained over 17 years of implementing the current law, including the need for consistency, oversight and clear standards,” the secretary said. “I believe these changes represent an important improvement in the way the current law is put into practice -- above all, by providing a greater measure of common sense and common decency to a process for handling what are difficult and complex issues for all involved....
Wow.
I had no idea that before this ruling the process was so hideous. It is almost an embarrassment to the military, isn't it? A 'trial' that actually robs a person of their dignity, identity, career and actually is a form of abuse would not even be held in the Civilian Courts.
I'm not impressed with the 'state of the way things were' before now in the military. It is more than unenlightened.
Good decent, hard working people that happen to practice a different sexual orientation THAN THE MAJORITY can have their lives this tenuous, ESPECIALLY, in the USA military is more than worrisome.
In my opinion, the ONLY reason any soldier, man or woman, should be reviewed at all at any level is if there are charges of sexual harassment, including all sexual identities of any member of the military. This 'problem' that seems to exist over sexual identity is more than curious. I have good friends that I spend time with that are gay and I could not understand why this would ever happen to them. It just doesn't make sense.
They might understand it, but, I don't.
They are some of the best in their chosen professions and I admire their lives and their values. They want to be married.
Tenuous is terrible way to live a life. Yet. Tenuous is ever so present in many GLBT lives. Tenuous over jobs, relationships, custody of children and their place within any religion they feel strongly can be one they would like to participate.
How does anyone that is heterosexual reconcile these issues with just a simple statement that is destroying lives? I can't get my mind around that entire mess. Maybe I just don't understand hatred.
I am pleased the military is making changes. I am confident that as time goes by the officers and leaders will feel more and more comfortable WITHOUT a poorly conceived culture surrounding the topic of sexual identity.
