Gays, gays, go away - unless there's a recruiting shortage

I'd heard rumors about this but hadn't seen any documentation until now. Via Pam, confirmation that the military cares a lot less about sexual orientation when they're short on soldiers:

(Santa Barbara, California) Scholars studying military personnel policy have discovered a document halting the discharge of gay soldiers in units that are about to be mobilized. [...]

The regulation was contained in a 1999 "Reserve Component Unit Commander's Handbook" and is still in effect, according to the Center.

It states that if a discharge for homosexual conduct is requested "prior to the unit's receipt of alert notification, discharge isn't authorized. Member will enter AD [active duty] with the unit."

The document is significant because of longstanding Pentagon denials that the military requires gays to serve during wartime, only to fire them once peacetime returns. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, gays and lesbians must be discharged whether or not the country is at war.

Gay soldiers and legal groups have reported for years that known gays are sent into combat, and then discharged when the conflicts end. Discharge statistics corroborate a pattern of rising expulsions during peacetime and plummeting rates during military conflicts, and Pentagon statistics confirm that, as has been the case in every war since World War II, gay discharges have declined during the current conflict in the Middle East.

The Pentagon, of course, denies that this is happening. In a beautiful example of doublespeak, the Congressional Research Service claims that the lower discharge rate of gays during wartime is the result of "random fluctuations in the data" rather than a specific policy. Riiiiiight. This practice completely belies the standard military argument that openly gay soldiers are unfit for duty because they'll be unduly distracted by sharing barracks and showers with people they might be attracted to. Seems we don't worry so much about that when push comes to shove. Steve Ralls (spokesperson for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) gets it right when he asks "as we've seen Coast Guardsmen rescuing the trapped in New Orleans ... Did those being rescued really care about the sexual orientation of those men and women who came to save them?"

I'm guessing the answer is no.