Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
I don’t know about your first question, but I recall that it got to be a joke during the Vietnam War that men would go prancing into the draft board with makeup on and lisp out that that were gay (this was pretty much everyone’s idea of what “gay men” acted like back then).
I think the draft board started getting onto this trick after awhile and being a little more skeptical.
The military has had the ban for quite some time (probably before WWII). However, in times of war, they were content to ignore it. If you were willing to be cannon fodder, they didn’t care who you shared your bunk with.
One story was that Eisenhower wanted to kick out all lesbians. At which point, his secretary informed him that she’d have to be kicked out. Another women in his office informed him of the same thing, so Ike dropped the idea.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
The first concerted effort to exclude gays from the military came in the years between WWI and WWII. Psychiatry was trying to assert itself as a social force and a couple of psychiatrists (Harry Stack Sullivan being one) convinced the military that psychiatric screenings of personnel would be a good idea. This was mostly because of the huge volume of “shell shock” cases following WWI. It was felt that pre-screening the military would lessen the risk of shell shock. Since at that time homosexuality was considered a mental illness, those who acknowledged being homosexual were excluded. Each branch had its own regulations for dealing with homosexuality in the ranks, and each service pursued homosexuals with different degrees of vigor (the Navy being the most vigorous). It was not until 1981 that a unified policy was formulated declaring homosexuality “incompatible with military service.” This was despite the sterling service records of innumerable gay and lesbian people. In times of war the policies were much more loosely enforced, although court-martials and discharges still happened.
Many draft counselors encouraged every inductee to declare himself homosexual. Some even issued instructions on how to “play gay.” There was a fairly dreadful movie called “The Gay Deceivers” based on this premise. Because the need for fresh bodies was so high, in many cases the military ignored the declaration. One famous case was that of Perry Watkins, who checked on his original induction form that he had “homosexual tendencies.” He was inducted anyway and served with distinction. He decided to make the Army his career. Every few years the Army would try to refuse to re-enlist him, and every few years a court would order them to do it. Since they had known from the day he was inducted that he was gay, the court would say, the Army could not now use that as reasoning for refusing him re-enlistment.