Commanders instead issued blue discharges – a form of administrative military discharge – to homosexual personnel. With the mass mobilization and deployment of troops for operations in World War II, it became impractical to convene court-martial boards for homosexual conduct offenses. WAC policies also condoned heterosexual relationships with servicemen in order to discourage homosexual conduct. The Women's Army Corps instituted harsh screening policies for recruits, often based on physical appearance and gender conformity, in order to exclude lesbians from service. The Women's Army Corps adopted a similar policy in 1944.
The United States Navy and the Selective Service adopted similar exclusionary policies. The United States Army Surgeon General's office issued a circular in 1941 that for the first time classified "homosexual proclivities" as disqualifying inductees from military service. Despite their recommendations, other psychiatrists and military officials made homosexuality a key component of the screening apparatus they recommended. Both believed homosexuals should not be inducted, and neither proposed excluding all homosexuals from military service. In 1940, psychiatrists Harry Stack Sullivan and Winfred Overholser formulated guidelines for psychiatric screening for military inductees. Before 1949, each tended to charge personnel caught engaging in homosexual conduct with sodomy, court-martial them, and issue them a dishonorable discharge. lacked a unified policy on service by homosexuals for most of their history. It was the first express prohibition of homosexuality or homosexual conduct in the armed forces of the United States.
The change went into effect on February 4, 1921. That was modified on June 4, 1920, to make the act of sodomy itself a crime. The Articles of War of the United States of 1916, implemented on March 1, 1917, included Article 93 stating that any person subject to military law who committed "assault with intent to commit sodomy" shall be punished as a court-martial may direct. military discharged soldiers for homosexual acts throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century even in the absence of any explicit prohibition of sodomy. The first evidence of antipathy to homosexuals serving in the United States military dates from March 11, 1778, when Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin was drummed out of the Continental Army following his conviction at court-martial on charges of sodomy and perjury. Despite rumors about his parties, there never was an investigation of Steuben and he received a Congressional pension after the war. Steuben became an American general, and a senior advisor to Washington. He joined Washington's army at Valley Forge in February 1778 accompanied by two young aides. Von Steuben escaped Germany where he was threatened with prosecution for homosexuality. To train the new American Army in the latest military drills and tactics, General George Washington brought in Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730–94), who had been an officer on the German General staff. 2.2 Response from Veterans' Health Administration.2.1 Concerns from gay and lesbian veterans.When separated by gender, 1.9% of males identified as gay and 2.0% as bisexual, while 7.0% of females identified as lesbian and 9.1% as bisexual. In December 2010, the House and Senate passed and President Barack Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, and under its provisions, restrictions on service by gay, lesbian, and bisexual personnel ended as of September 20, 2011.Īccording to a RAND Corporation report, a 2015 survey of over 16,000 service members found that 5.8% of the respondents identified as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. In 2010, two federal courts ruled the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual service personnel unconstitutional, and on July 6, 2011, a federal appeals court suspended the DADT policy. Although there were isolated instances in which service personnel were met with limited success through lawsuits, efforts to end the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving either legislatively, or through the courts initially proved unsuccessful. In 1993, the United States Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed a law instituting the policy commonly referred to as " Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. The United States military formerly excluded gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians from service. See also: Transgender personnel in the United States military and Intersex people and military service in the United States