http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060619/ap_ ... NlYwM3MDM-

Pentagon lists homosexuality as disorder
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.

The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders.

Critics said the reference underscores the Pentagon's failing policies on gays, and adds to a culture that has created uncertainty and insecurity around the treatment of homosexual service members, leading to anti-gay harassment.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin said the policy document is under review.

The Pentagon has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prohibits the military from inquiring about the sex lives of service members but requires discharges of those who openly acknowledge being gay.

The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, uncovered the document and pointed to it as further proof that the military deserves failing grades for its treatment of gays.

Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow at the center, said, "The policy reflects the department's continued misunderstanding of homosexuality and makes it more difficult for gays and lesbians to access mental health services."

The document, called a Defense Department Instruction, was condemned by medical professionals, members of Congress and other experts, including the American Psychiatric Association.

"It is disappointing that certain Department of Defense instructions include homosexuality as a 'mental disorder' more than 30 years after the mental health community recognized that such a classification was a mistake," said Rep. Marty Meehan (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.

Congress members noted that other Pentagon regulations dealing with mental health do not include homosexuality on any lists of psychological disorders. And in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Monday, nine lawmakers asked for a full review of all documents and policies to ensure they reflect that same standard.

"Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 — a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science," James H. Scully Jr., head of the psychiatric association, said in a letter to the Defense Department's top doctor earlier this month.

There were 726 military members discharged under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy during the budget year that ended last Sept. 30. That marked the first year since 2001 that the total had increased. The number of discharges had declined each year since it peaked at 1,227 in 2001, and had fallen to 653 in 2004.

Shooting a gun is sexual if not homoerotic. You're grasping something that's hard, firm, and shooting stuff out of it. This whole military-hates-gays thing is ironic considering the amount of machismo involved in an all-male environment. Homosexuality has always had a tendency to develop in same-sex societies and systems. They're avoiding various, inevitable outcomes in people with bullshit like this.

That must be why some many gay men are fashion designers.

That's horseshit, just as much as a conservative saying that homosexuality develops from boys playing with dolls.

Homosexuality just fucking HAPPENS. Saying stupid shit like this lends ammunition to those bigots who think it is a choice.

I was being slightly facetious. People are going to want to get off some way or another no matter who they're around.

But couldn't they just... like... not punch each others doughnuts?

wow...sickening...

they should discharge people for admitting they're straight, too. i always hated this policy. way to skirt it until the next president has to deal with it, bill.

so following this argument that being gay is a psychiatric disorder...

people with psychiatric disorders get married all the time...sometimes to other people with psychiatric disorders. if the gov't truly thinks that gay = mental disablity, then according to the gov't, "chronic" gays should be protected under the americans with disabilities act.

that means the whole push to make same sex marriage illegal is made moot by this one document.

Nicely done.

Dude, what do you expect? Just another reason for me to hate war.

i think the government's doing a great job. hey, my gas is 3 bucks a gallon, but whatever!

I'd love to watch this lawsuit develop.

you want in? my sister would like to get married to her partner in kentucky.

interesting that they call being gay a disorder, but not sending enough troops is perfectly ok. Attacking a country that is so scared of their owndictatorship, they wouldn't raise many terrorists interested in hurting us. That's not a disorder. Disorder is being gay.

what a bunch of wankers.

Considering Al-Qaeda's policy on queers, don't they have a right to fight against these people?

The Pentagon can't get shit right about big fucking missiles and nuclear material, but we expect them to get the complex biology of sexuality and sexual identity? What a joke.

To be reasonable, some homosexuality is probably caused by mental disorders. Some is probably caused by societal pressure. I would guess that >90% is genetic. So they are partially right.

Come again?

I'm talking about the death penalty for same-sex acts.

I'm still not quite following you I don't think. Don't who have the right to fight against these people?

I know you're not a homophobe, but it sounded like you meant the Pentagon is free to treat their own gays the way they like if al-Qaeda do it too. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean that.