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tigator's cap because the quarry when caught can be regarded almost as a Russian spy, or at best a subvert looking for an opportunity to defect. Ironically, some of the investigators and signatories to the bad discharges are sometimes found to be homosexual themselves. Such is the merry-go-round of military madness because it cannot get away from the realities of human behavior.
Wasting manpower is a characteristic of our modern culture. In spite of noble words in historic documents which set up the basis for individual freedom and human dignity, we see today a tragic slaughter by investigation, innuendo, hate campaigns, distrust and suspicion to wreck human lives on the basis of invalidated reports, gossip, and statements by "witnesses" who need never face those they accuse. Human life in many ways has come to have less and less value. Therefore there is little compassion stirred up when we talk of waste in those terms.
For instance, everyone surely realizes that the above cited situation of men up for less than honorable discharges is only a drop in the bucket of this sort of thing which has been going on for 15 years or more since the "security risk" policy went into, effect. In the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, as well as in the Navy and in other areas of government employ, inestimable manpower and expense has been devoted to the task of assassination of this sort with results that are not made public too easily. And the number of leaders in the professions and poli-
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tics who have examined this situation with intelligence and courage have been few indeed-if any.
But on and on it goes. Blackmail as a threat is grossly exaggerated. In fact, there would be almost no threat of blackmail if the attitude 'toward private sex behavior or sexual orientation were changed. Remove the terrible stigma and make it pos-, sible for homosexuals to be regarded: as equal human beings, and the danger of blackmail is minimized. And discard this nonsense that homosexuals present the only blackmail threat -it just isn't so. Current military attitudes actually create the very conditions which they profess to detest.
However, it remains that the discharge of thousands of men from the. armed forces on homosexual charges arouses little public indignation or concern. The general attitude seems to be that such people aren't worth it. Consequently, it isn't a fit cause for any politician to champion if he wants to get re-elected. How vicious can a circle get?
Another angle, nevertheless, should cause concern in the one place most tender in American hearts: the pocketbook. Here again, the loss is terrific.
It costs, possibly, as much as $30,000 to the taxpayers of the U.S. to train, equip, transport, and place on duty the average enlisted man with technical skill qualifications for a specific manning document assignment in the complex armed forces establishment today. This figure may be off a little-we don't have anything but the estimates of persons
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recently in uniform to go on. However when the total investment in the men affected is considered, it cannot be too high. But simple multiplication and allowance for error tells us that the 117 men up for discharge at the naval base mentioned above means a loss of at least $3,000,000 to U.S. taxpayers.
Extend this figure to a conservative estimate for a year, two years or a decade and a half of perpetuating ancient myths and taboos in an atomicage military establishment, and the result is inescapable: We have wasted billions of dollars, wrecked many thousands of lives, and for what?
The incidence of homosexuality in the armed forces is not reduced one whit. Nor will it be when modern research tells us that possibly one man in six is so oriented in a predominant or atleast significant sense, especially when regimented and seregated as military and naval service require at times. Do we go on and on with this waste?
to be regarded as blackmail victims and possible subverts, then must we permit only confirmed heterosexuals to wear our armed forces uniforms? "But in a trial in Washington, D.C., recently," he said, "a married man was charged with giving secrets to a woman not his wife. Does this mean that because heterosexuals are subjest to blackmail we must consider them unsuitable for service also?"
The audience laughed. Then Dr. Bowman added that if we extended logic rationally at all, we therefore would have to agree that heterosexuals were also unfit. And he went on, something like this: "That would leave the eunuchs." These male castrates, he explained, were utilized extensively in history by sultans, chiefs and rulers in the Middle East, Asia and the Orient to guard harems and perform duties of trust in the
courts.
"And, upon occasion even they betrayed their masters," he concluded.
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Not long ago, an eminent expert in WOULD YOU LIKE TO HELP human sex behavior problems addressed a church group in California. There Dr. Carl M. Bowman, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of California, declared:
"Homosexuality per se is a crime in the armed forces." He went on to tell that a psychological condition or personality orientation was in itself a basis for criminal action in terms of "military justice".
Then he asked if homosexuals were
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