Pentagon Withheld True Number Of Fired Gay Linguists

Records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request show that the military misled the public and discharged three times the number of gay Arabic linguists that it had said.

The records were obtained by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, a research unit of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Despite previously saying that under “don’t ask, don’t tell” it had discharged seven translators who specialized in Arabic the new documents show that between 1998 and 2004, the military actually discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers. [...]

Ian Finkenbinder, a U.S. Army Arabic linguist who graduated from the Defense Language Institute in 2002, was discharged from the military last month after announcing to his superiors that he’s gay. Finkenbinder, who said his close friends in the Army already knew he was gay, served eight months in Iraq and was about to return for a second tour when he made the revelation official.

“I looked at myself and said, ‘Are you willing to go to war with an institution that won’t recognize that you have the right to live as you want to,’” said Finkenbinder, 22. “It just got to be tiresome to deal with that -- to constantly have such a significant part of your life under scrutiny.” (source)

Shocking, isn’t it? Actually, the sad thing is, it really isn’t shocking. It’s amazing to me that the military can actually function (although, after Abu Gharib, one has to question that) given that it can’t make sensible decisions like this. It makes no sense to discharge these soldiers for being gay when their talents are urgently needed in a time or war.

The bottom line is this: The Bush Administration puts a higher value on kicking out gay service members than it does the lives of your sons and daughters serving in Iraq.

How does that make you feel America? I'm not “pushing a gay agenda”. If the soldiers Finkenbinder served with had no problem with him being gay, should the military? Should we?