Hearing Sought Over Linguists’ Discharge
Lawmakers who say the military has kicked out 58 Arabic language experts because they were gay want the Pentagon to explain how it can afford to let the valuable specialists go.
Seizing on the latest discharge, involving three specialists, House members wrote the House Armed Services Committee chairman on Wednesday that the continued loss of such “capable, highly skilled Arabic linguists continues to compromise our national security during time of war.”
Former Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephen Benjamin said his supervisor tried to keep him on the job and urged him to sign a statement saying he was not gay. Benjamin said his lawyer advised against signing because the statement could be used against him later if other evidence surfaced.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Benjamin said he was caught improperly using the military’s secret level computer system to send messages to his roommate, who was serving in Iraq. In those messages, he said, he may have referred to being gay or going on a date.
“I’d always had been out since the day I started working there,” Benjamin said. “We had conversations about being gay in the military and what it was like. There were no issues with unit cohesion. I never caused divisiveness or ever experienced slurs,” said Benjamin, who was in the Navy for nearly four years.
He was fired under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law passed in 1994. It lets gays serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and do not engage in homosexual acts. The law prohibits commanders from asking about a person’s sex life and requires discharge of those who openly acknowledge they are gay.
Rep. Marty Meehan (news, bio, voting record), who has sought a repeal, organized the letter to Rep. Ike Skelton (news, bio, voting record), D-Mo., asking the committee hold a hearing about the Arabic linguists.
“At a time when our military is stretched to the limit and our cultural knowledge of the Middle East is dangerously deficient, I just can’t believe that kicking out able, competent Arabic linguists is making our country any safer,” Meehan said.
The letter, signed by about 40 House members, says that the military has discharged 58 Arabic linguists under the policy and that Congress should decide whether “don’t ask, don’t tell” “is serving the nation well.”
For Benjamin, 23, the discharge ended a military career he had hoped to continue.
He said he was among about 70 people investigated at Fort Gordon in Georgia for using the computer to send personal notes. He said others who are not gay kept their jobs even though they were caught sending sexual and profane messages.
Benjamin said investigators from the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office pulled the message logs for one day and reviewed them for violations. Some people, he said, received administrative punishments for writing dirty jokes, profanity and explicit sexual references.
According to researchers at the California-based Michael D. Palm Center, which tracks these issues, three Arabic linguists were fired as a result of the computer reviews. Their names were not released. Benjamin agreed to discuss the incident publicly.
The center’s director, Aaron Belkin, said, “There is simply no common sense reason for the military to fire Arabic linguists in the midst of a dire shortage of translators. Translating al-Qaida cables is more important the making sure that the military is free of gays.”
Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon is enforcing the law.
The Defense Department, he said, “must ensure that the standards for enlistment and appointment of members of the armed forces reflect the policies set forth by Congress,” he said.
Benjamin said the computer review was done last December, but his discharge was not finalized until the end of March. His roommate, he said, was allowed to finish out his tour in Iraq and came home in February, then was discharged in early April.
“I was always discreet, I never considered it would be an issue,” said Benjamin, when asked why he joined the military knowing the policy existed. “I thought if I don’t say anything, they’re not going to ask me. But, it was more aggressive than I thought.”
Meehan’s bill to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law has 124 co-sponsors, but efforts to get Congress to take another look at the issue have not yet been successful.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he was not reviewing the policy.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press
the military needs more cunning linguists
This reminds me of a Kids in the Hall sketch where a board of directors refuses to read a report because they suspect that the author wrote it while he was naked.
I can imagine a similar situation with a group of generals in the War Room saying,
“I can’t read this translation! It was written by a soldier while he was gay!”
“Policy clearly states that all translations must be written by soldiers who have signed document P3412a-2 stating that they are not gay, darlings.”
so kicking out fags is more important than the war on terrorism…hmmmmmm
It is truly amazing what people are afraid of.
D’ya think that Osama bin Laden is protesting the use of gay soldiers to translate his stuff?
Probably he celebrates the loss of any competent translators, and certainly thanks the generals for doing so.
Seldom have we fought a war where we tried so hard to make the other guys win . . .
Why would anyone who opposes homosexuality and the gay lifestyle want to kick them out now that it is dangerous in the military? By the speeches Republicans make you would think that GAY ARABIC speakers would be ideal casualties.
I see the Cheney clan is welcoming the child that the Republican supporters would call a bastard. This child will be brought up in the antithesis of the kind of family the religious right approves.
Will they be as disgusted as they are when a Democrat is found to have a sex life?
Having spent four years long ago in the Army Security Agency as a “linguist” intercepting Spanish-language radio communications, I can tell you that if they had discharged all of us who were gay they’d have been forced to shut down the operation altogether. It’s always been an open secret that military intelligence units, like the medics, have more than their share of gay members. There have always been discharges. The difference these days is that gay people are less intimidated and less secretive and so more apt to be discovered.
I can’t beleive that a linguist really wrote this sentence:
“I’d always had been out since the day I started working there,”
Beyond that, it disturbs me that some of the posters above believe that the “war on terror” actually exists, let alone is somehow viable or justifiable. Personally, I have no problem being excluded from the military because of my homosexuality; I exclude the military from my life because I think it is disgusting. However, I hope all those kicked out are able to find better jobs, and that the American military fails.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
I agree with the last comment. We should keep homosexuals out of the military, as well as democrats, ethnic minorities, foreign nationals, women, and anybody else who might increase the effectiveness of the war machine. On the other hand, integrating military units was a valuable help in overcoming racial prejudice and if we are ever to overcome the sin of heterosexism in our society, we will have to one day integrate the military. I suspect that we will repent of this sin long before we repent of the sin of military violence.
Canuckchuck, I love the phrase, cunning linguists. As a hetero male, it is a skill that is worth diving into.
I am absolutely mystified at this “don’t ask, don’t tell” regulation. I suppose if these linguists were celibate priests whose only prayer was not to prey too openly, they would make ideal soldiers. What of the rules against adultery and prostitution? I was in VietNam and there was a thriving sex trade, and it was not just single men who participated. How many senior officers and enlisted men(mostly, I suppose)have violated this adultery rule and been court martialed? The ranks of the military would be decimated if all the adulterers and fornicators were held to the same standard as gays. But, the military was never about common sense and balance and fairness in enforcing rules and regulations. I still would love to see the day when every gay person, whether closeted or out, failed to show up for work over a 24 hour period. That would make the immigrant demonstrations pale(pardon the pun) in comparison.
How are you going to find hetero-christian men willing to learn the Arabic language and risk the hell awaiting fallen christians by speaking the language of Muslims?
May the True God of Love share Her Peace with all,
St John
If 58 Arab speakers (a true US minority) were kicked out, what must be the total number of gays removed from the military? Our country is FUBAR, and those in charge merely idiots running the asylum.
Does anybody else see a little bit of a contradiction in demonstrating against military recruiters one day and the next day opposing military exclusion of lesbians and gay men? And does anybody else miss the days when Gay Liberation was resolutely opposed to all forms of militarism?
The layers of stupidity in all this is just too deep for me to wade in to… What tragic, funny times we live in. Jesus wept… send in the clowns.
Why is everybody intimidated by the religious right? They don’t have nearly the clout that they will have if nobody stands up to them. And then too—idiot in chief continues to encourage them.