Who gets discharged under don ask, don tell?
The military threw out hundreds of service members in 2009 for violating its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, including disproportionate numbers of women and minorities and dozens of service members in “mission critical” positions, according to a new analysis of military data. The Pentagon honorably discharged 428 service members for violating the ban on openly gay troops in 2009, according to statistics reviewed by the nonpartisan Palm Center, a think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara studying the impact of gays in the military. The figure is down from 619 service members discharged for violating the policy in 2008. Women account for 14 percent of Army soldiers but received 48 percent of the Army’s “don’t ask” discharges in 2009, the study said. Six percent of the Marine Corps is female, but women accounted for 23 percent of its discharges. The Navy discharged only two officers for violating the policy in 2009, and both were Asian. The Army discharged five officers
