Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate

[Wilson Gray]

Kevin writes:

[I]t seems foolish to kick out a herd of them just because they choose
a lifestyle that can no longer be used as a tool in blackmail.

Kevin makes an excellent point. Merely because of my own decision to
choose the black lifestyle, I, too, have often been treated unjustly.
At least, though, nobody ever tried to kick me out of the Army for
that choice, though there were times when I wished that someone would!

What I have a problem with is that the military is freaking out about
gays and security now, when it wasn't bothering about it fifty years
ago, at the time of my military career. When I was in basic, I had a
barracks-mate who was always saying, "Hey, let's dance! I'll be the
girl!" You'd think that that kind of behavior would trigger an alarm
on anybody's gaydar. However, the only consequence of it was that guys
danced with him. Of course, it's possible that I was the only straight
guy in that barracks and all the other guys, except for "Dancing
Danny," were closeted gays. You never know.

When I was stationed in West Berlin, there was a guy there who got the
necessary top-secret/crypto clearance, graduated from the Army
Language School, served in the Army Security Agency, then went to work
for the NSA, which returned him to the ASA in Berlin as a consultant,
after the Wall went up. He was so openly gay that he was known among
the troops as "The Purse." The only consequence of this was that he
was eventually told that the officers' club was open only to officers
and to civilians and that he had to stop bringing EM in as his guests.

-Wilson

On 5/28/07, Kevin Birge <kevin at frontstretch.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Kevin Birge <kevin at FRONTSTRETCH.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm not sure what happened there. Never seen that before. I'll switch
> it over to plain text. I can't promise that this will have much more
> of a point though.
>
> Here's what I sent:
>
> I used to be a Thai linguist when I was in the Air Force. Learning the
> alphabet for Thai really wasn't that hard really. The first few weeks
> of classes involved using  a kind of phonetic spelling until the
> student was able to easily read the Thai alphabet.  Since Thai is a
> phonetic alphabet with about 80 characters (it's been over 20 years, I
> can't remember the exact number and don't want to look it up,) it
> wasn't that difficult to learn and was definitely  needed in order to
> fully understand the language.  The only thing that I noticed after
> learning Thai and using it every day for three years was that my
> English spelling skills suffered horribly.  Fortunately, spell check
> was just a couple of years away, and all was right with the world
> again!
>
> I knew a couple of Farsi linguists at the time, and from what I
> remember, learning the alphabet wasn't the difficult part there
> either.  They'd already taken tests to show that they had a talent for
> learning languages so learning however many symbols they needed to
> learn the language came easy. Not so much for the Chinese linguists,
> but for languages with an alphabet, not a big issue.
>
> Like Wilson said though, given the investment that the government has
> to put into these soldiers, it seems foolish to kick out a herd of
> them just because they choose a lifestyle that can no longer be used
> as a tool in blackmail. I do remember that once you got on the job,
> the linguist were punished more severely for things that might have
> been either overlooked or handled verbally.  I don't know for sure why
> that is, but I suspect that they don't do enough stupid things that
> start out with the phrase "Hey. watch this!" to get them into trouble
> that they early 80's standard airman might do. I could be wrong
> though. It's just a theory.
>
> Kevin
>
>
>
> On 5/28/07, Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at HOTMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I'm not sure I see your point...
> >
> > Scot LaFaive
> >
> >
> > >From: Kevin Birge <kevin at FRONTSTRETCH.COM>
> > >Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > >Subject: Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't translate
> > >Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:41:04 -0400
> > >
> > >---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > >-----------------------
> > >Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > >Poster:       Kevin Birge <kevin at FRONTSTRETCH.COM>
> > >Subject:      Re: Army tells gay translators: don't tell, or don't
> > >translate
> > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > snip giberrish
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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