In 1944, according to Bérubé, an Army doctor tested tongue depressors on patients who were being treated as “sexual psychopaths”-one of the code terms for homosexuals. Military scientists began devising dubious tests to measure sexual orientation. During World War II, out of some 18 million potential enlistees, the military only identified between 4,000 and 5,000 homosexuals, a severe undercount, estimates Bérubé.ġ978 "Gang of 19" activists occupy Denver intersection to protest inaccessibility on the city’s bus system In their effort to screen out queer conscripts, military officials ran into a problem: They didn’t have a conclusive way of identifying them, beyond a set of subjectively interpreted “signs” such as “feminine bodily characteristics” and “effeminacy in dress and manner,” according to Allan Bérubé, author of Coming Out Under Fire: Gay Men and Women During World War II. READ MORE: The Supreme Court Rulings That Have Shaped Gay Rights in America ‘Scientific’ Attempts to Identify Homosexuals For these veterans, already facing formidable racist barriers to jobs and housing, the stain of a blue discharge further crippled their future prospects for chances for stability. Blue discharges could be dispensed to anyone with “undesirable traits of character,” a term ultimately applied in large numbers to queer people.Īccording to Jones, the NAACP worked with Black service members accused of homosexuality, like Lemuel Brown, to appeal to the Discharge Review Board for a changed status-usually with little success. Both could be issued without a court-martial hearing, and because they were both printed on blue paper, they together became known as “blue discharges.” With WWII’s massive human mobilization, the military shifted from its practice of jailing soldiers accused of homosexuality (which required time-consuming, expensive court-martials) to simply deeming them psychologically unfit. It added a Without Honor discharge in 1893, followed by an Unclassified discharge in 1913. military began expanding its menu of options. Outright dishonorable discharges were rare, however, because they required a court-martial trial.Īt the end of the 19th century, the U.S. Service members who left the military could receive either an “honorable” or “dishonorable” release. military relied on a two-pronged discharge system. US Army Signal Corps/PhotoQuest/Getty Imagesįor the first 100 years of its existence, the U.S. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.US Army Honorable Discharge papers, c. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering.
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