Pentagon Working to Restore Advantages to LGBTQ+ Veterans Pressured Out Below ‘Do not Ask, Do not Inform’
Pentagon Working to Restore Advantages to LGBTQ+ Veterans Pressured Out Below ‘Do not Ask, Do not Inform’
The Pentagon is seen from Air Power One because it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. (AP Picture/Patrick Semansky, File)
By Tara Copp
Below DADT and former navy insurance policies forbidding homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer personnel from serving, a minimum of 32,837 service members since 1980 had been pressured out of the navy for his or her sexual orientation, in keeping with Division of Protection information.
Greater than 2,000 of these service members acquired basic, aside from honorable, or unknown discharge characterizations “which will have denied them entry to veterans advantages, like residence loans, well being care, GI Invoice tuition help and even some authorities jobs,” Deputy Protection Secretary Kathleen Hicks stated.
“We all know correcting these information can’t totally restore the dignity taken from LGBTQ+ service members after they had been expelled from the navy,” Hicks stated. “It doesn’t utterly heal the unseen wounds that had been left, it doesn’t make folks entire once more, even for these many who acquired honorable discharges. However that is one more step we’re taking to ensure we do proper by those that served honorably.”
