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November 15, 2002
Gay Army Linguists Say They Were Ousted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14 — Nine Army linguists, including six trained in Arabic, have been dismissed from the military because they are gay, even as the military faces a critical shortage of translators and interpreters for the war on terrorism, gay rights advocates say.
Seven of the soldiers were discharged after telling superiors that they are gay; two others were caught together after curfew, said Steve Ralls, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that defends homosexuals in the military.
Six were specializing in Arabic, two were studying Korean and one was studying Mandarin Chinese. All were at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, the military's primary language training center.
Harvey Perritt, a spokesman for the Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe in Tidewater, Va., confirmed that the dismissals occurred from October 2001 to September 2002, but declined to comment further on the cases.
The government has aggressively recruited Arabic speakers since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Alastair Gamble, a former Army specialist who was among those dismissed, said that he and another linguist applied for other federal jobs where they could use their language skills in the war on terrorism, but neither was hired.
The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy allows gays to serve provided they keep quiet about their sexual orientation.
Copyright The New York Times Company
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