During the Vietnam draft: could you go down to the enlistment

[Bunny]

office and announce that you were gay, and avoid the draft? Did something like that work for men to get out of going to Nam?

If there is an upcoming draft, would Don't Ask Don't Tell prevent people from using this as a reason to avoid the draft?

[wuushew]

1. I don't see a draft under a democratic congress

in any case one could always go to prision and read books and have three square meals a day instead of getting your head blown off in Iraq/Iran.

[Capn Sunshine]

2. People did all kinds of wacky stuff which probably wouldn't work today

The problem being, during the Vietnam Era, the Armed Services were a little more selective about who they would take.

Among the things I personally witnessed:

Guys wore their sisters underwear under their clothes to the physical.
Guys would not bathe or remove their jeans for up to a month beforehand.
Guys would tattoo "FTA"("Fuck The Army") on the edge of their right ( saluting) hand. This didn't work long.

A bazillion other innovative things indicating craziness or physical unsuitability.

These days, I think they'd take all of them, their standards have fallen so low.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. They will take anyone. In fact, they are dang close to conscripting people.

As it is, they have made some very questionable recruitments of mentally challenged people.

[Bunny]

4. Didn't Ted Nugent piss and shit himself repeatedly before going

down to the draft board? Strange, indeed.

I'm particularly interested in the gay aspect of this. With Pace's remarks yesterday, and the current DADT policy, I wonder if they would accept someone who showed up and said "I'm gay, deal with it" or something.

[Capn Sunshine]

6. DADT means just that

if you "tell" there are regs against homosexual activity , and you'll be unacceptable.

DADT was conceived to protect the large numbers of gays currently serving. Whether it's effective depends who you talk to.

[PerfectSage]

7. Guys would tattoo "FTA" on the edge of their right hand

:rofl: How come that didn't work long?

[HereSince1628]

5. You need to see "Alice's Restaurant:"

I never saw it happen at a draft board or an induction center, but I did see a guy get kicked out of the Army for being gay. He was charged with fondling another guy at the base theater. That happened while he was in advanced training for his MOS. The training command yanked his TS&C access and that ended his training. Then he went up on the charge and they busted him to E-2 and sent him packing on a "less than honorable" discharge. Last time I saw him was when he was leaving to catch a bus back to Pennsylvania.

The irony was more than half of us wanted out of the Army. He wanted in the Army. He showed us one way out, but nobody really wanted to use that exit.

[Betsy Ross]

8. Not that easy.

I have direct knowledge of a man who was drafted. During basic training, he told the army he was gay. He had to produce a gay lover to corroborate his story. Dishonorable discharge. But he didn't go to Viet Nam!

[Turbineguy]

9. There was a time

that there was only one real problem with Gays in the military and that was they were vulnerable to blackmail, which made them a security risk. That in my view is a valid reason for keeping gays out of the military. However, a secret loses its power if it is no longer a secret. Since there are so many people who are openly hetero, I don't see what problem there is with people who are openly Gay.

At the end of the day it's how well people perform in their job that counts. It seems to me that those of us (males) who are not gay and are worried about unwelcome advances can take some lessons from the opposite sex on how to deal with them.

As for General Pace's "immoral" remark, as compared to what other things go on in the military?

[TreasonousBastard]

10. There were all kinds of books and articles around...

telling us how to get out of the draft.

Aside from cutting your foot off or piercing your eardrum, taking tons of medical records with you to the first physical actually worked if you could prove you had any of the 10 pages of conditions that made you 4-F. Wearing your sister's underwear or smearing yourself with shit and the other similar stuff were mostly urban legends to fill out the books-- they could get you an overnight for psych evaluation and curious remarks in your medical records to follow you around when you still found your ass in the Army.

Getting really fat for the first physical was one "easy" way out, for a while. Don't try to weight up for the second one, though, since by then they knew you were faking it and didn't bother weighing you the second time-- lose it Basic. Student and teaching deferments, pulling connections to get in the Guard, trying to get in the Navy before you were called (the Coast Guard was closed) and waiting it out in Canada were far more popular. Most of these aren't possible or advisable now.

But, before we have a draft again, around 300 congresscritters have to vote to reinstate it, and can you imagine who wants to back to their districts or states and justify that vote in this climate?

[damntexdem]

11. Sugar in the urine was often more effective.

"I'm only 16, I have a ruptured spleen,
and I always carry a purse.
My feet are flat, I have eyes like a bat,
and my asthma's getting worse.
Think of my career, my sweetheart dear,
and my poor, old immigrant aunt.
And I ain't no fool, I'm a going to school,
and working in a defence plant."

We did lots of things.

As to the sugar: the idea was to put some under the fingernails and then drop it in as one filled the urine cup.

[GreenZoneLT]

12. Yet another weird thing in Bushland

Randy Shilts in "Conduct Unbecoming" documented how outing and ousting of gay servicemembers always stopped during wartime. But not since Sept. 11. W's pecksniffery patrol has kept up the witchhunts; military manning needs be damned. I mean, these are dangerous homos we're talking about; what higher priority can the military have than to uncover and discharge them?

Sheesh.