The Department of Defense released their "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharge numbers from the fiscal year of 2010. They are claiming 261. From the Huffington Post:
A total of 261 service members, including 11 in the Coast Guard -- which falls under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security -- were tossed out in fiscal 2010, a tally by Servicemembers United found. The group said it based its numbers on internal Defense Department statistics that are not routinely released publicly.
Oddly, a quick Google News search reveals Huffington Post to be the only semi-mainstream outlet to even report on this story, although it did make all the main LGBT news sources.
Another odd thing to note, is perhaps the year's most famous dischargee, National Guardsman Lt Dan Choi, who was officially booted in July, did not find himself counted among the 261. How that can be after the fold.
To understand how Lt Dan Choi could not be included, keep three words in mind:
Creative Governmental Accounting.
We see tricks played to spin numbers in a more favorable light all the time. Stay unemployed long enough an you no longer count on the rolls of the unemployed. You may not have a job, but the Labor Department no longer can see you.
Wars are popular choices for such treatment, move the bills off the publicly released budget numbers, and it no longer counts that taxpayers are sending billions of dollars overseas and into the pockets of Halliburton, et al.
Such tricks are the antithesis of transparent Government. The Department of Defense has played these games with DADT discharge numbers from day one.
“Unusually high” says Servicemembers United’s Nicholson
Alex Nicholson, Executive Director of the DADT repeal advocacy group, Servicemembers United calls these numbers "unusally high" and I'm inclined to agree. It does strike me that for most of the last year, the LGBT community has been assured that discharges had been halted, or nearly non-existent. But numbers don't lie. This data does suggest that discharges were, in fact, continuing at an average rate of 5 per week.
Nicholson also explains how they are still suspect numbers. The DOD has always played creative accounting with DADT discharge numbers, omitting soldiers like National Guardsmen and sometimes reservists and others.
"While this latest official discharge number represents an all-time annual low, it is still unusually high considering that the Secretary of Defense issued a directive half-way through the fiscal year to make it much harder for military units to discharge troops under 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United. "Despite this law clearly being on its deathbed at the time, 261 more careers were terminated and 261 more lives were abruptly turned upside down because of this policy."
While these annual figures released by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are used to calculate the official DADT discharge statistics, which now stand at grand total of 13,686, Servicemembers United previously uncovered and reported that the Department of Defense does not actually release information on all discharges under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." National Guard discharge numbers, which have yet to be released for fiscal year 2010, are often omitted from the official annual discharge numbers reported by the Department of Defense. This means that the total unofficial number of servicemembers discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is now at least 14, 316.
According to Nicholson, Defense Manpower Data Center did not include National Guard, the umbrella that Lt Choi served, so he would not be counted among these numbers. It is unclear at this point if these statistics include reservists.
In the press release, Nicholson references a story that broke in May 2010, where via Freedom of Information Act request his organization was able to uncover an additional 630 discharges previously unreported by the Department of Defense. (PDF).
Let us hope we soon see the end of these shameful reports.
Unfinished Business
We don't really have a clear picture what the future of LGB servicemembers looks like. There are
undeniably encouraging reports coming out of the military that they are implementing the DADT training swiftly and with a sensitivity and thoroughness that is admirable.
Anecdotal reports from servicemembers I've spoken to over the last year give a mixed picture. Many report that the climate is warming and they feel more comfortable and secure, that troops and ground commands are not nearly as concerned about this repeal as the more hysterical hyperbole from the right would suggest.
But a few have suggested that there are some in the military who are launching a Pyrrhic victory effort to rout out the homosexuals while they still can.
This has always been the true shame of this policy, that by its very nature it invites capricious and arbitrary application, given the whims of an individual Commanding Officer's inclinations. It is impossible to arrive at an objective standard for what is "too gay" to efficiently, and effectively serve in the military. It is left to the individual COs to decide what "offenses" warrant "investigation."
And the standards for what constitutes "telling" have been equally elastic. Servicemembers have been discharged for what they've written in personal emails sent to home, said on phone calls, pictures they've kept on their own phones, and the anonymous gossip of their small-minded, bigoted peers.
That individual commands are so often run like fiefdoms is the reason DADT repeal advocates were very upset when the non-discrimination language was stricken from Patrick Murphy's original bill in the compromise deal brokered by the White House in May 2010.
And unfortunately, the military has also refused to include "sexual orientation" to the Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) program. Kerry Eleveld wrote on the implications for this on Equality Matters, saying, "DADT Discharges May End, But Discrimination Might Not."
Another reporter later noted that gays aren't officially a "protected class" as defined by the military's equal opportunity (MEO) program, which includes race, color, national origin, religion, and sex.
"If it's not a protected class, can you actually assert discrimination?" asked the reporter.
Cartwright responded by noting this was "a legal area" where they "probably ought to get a lawyer to look at this."
In fact, Stanley's January 28, 2011 memo to the secretaries of the military departments expressly states that sexual orientation will be excluded from the MEO: "Sexual orientation will not be considered along with race, color, religion, sex and national origin as a class under the Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) program and therefore will not be dealt with through the MEO complaint process."
Is “Unprofessional Conduct” the New DADT?
And we are already seeing the implications these policy decisions may have for LGB soldiers. The story of Navy Petty Officer Stephen Jones was recently reported by
CNN:
Sailor says Navy punishing him for sleepover with male sailor.
A sailor is accusing the Navy of baselessly trying to discharge him for "unprofessional conduct" in an effort to get around the recent "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, after being found asleep in the same bed with another male sailor.
Navy Petty Officer Stephen Jones, a student at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, South Carolina, told CNN that on the night of February 5, a male sailor stopped by to watch the CW TV show "Vampire Diaries."
The article says the other soldier involved accepted the mast and punishment, but Jones has refused. The article quotes him as saying:
"I'm not pleading guilty to something that I didn't do. I did not commit a crime. I am the type of person that takes responsibility for my actions. If I break a rule, I take my punishment. And I know I did not break any rules."
His attorney is quoted as saying:
"This Command suspects that Jones is a homosexual but has no proof. It cannot invoke 'don't ask, don't tell' because there is no homosexual conduct and there is no admission of homosexuality. Yet this homophobic Command is using its suspicions to reach the same result as though there were," said [attorney Greg] Myers. "This is bigotry disguised as the rule of law."
Those in the military who have extraordinary animus to gays still have the option to trump up relatively minor charges that heterosexuals routinely are forgiven. They may be stripped of DADT, but nothing prevents them from calling such "offenses" "unprofessional conduct" and discharge gays with extraordinary latitude and little or no oversight. This is, of course, how all discrimination works, a higher standard is applied to those "undesirables," where they may be disproportionately punished relative to their more "desireable" and popular peers.
And unfortunately, absent any non-discrimination policy, or access to the resources of the Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) program, soldiers like Officer Stephen Jones, are left with no avenues for redress.