Here’s the deal:
I’m the youngest son
My father has passed away
My mother is the sole provider
I do have an older brother, but he’s 29 and has his own family
Would they be able to draft me? What other non-medical circumstances allow you to not be drafted?
I dunno…if you walk inot your recruiting office and annouce loudly that you are gay and proud of it maybe that would get you off of the hook.
Ok…I said that as a joke but would that work? Don’t ask, don’t tell is all well and fine but if I broadcast it to the military will they refuse my admission? MUST they refuse my admission?
Have you visited http://www.sss.gov/ lately?
According to the chart on http://www.sss.gov/must.htm there is no information which excludes you from registration, let alone being drafted.
Even checking http://www.sss.gov/FSpostdefer.htm does not list your status as being exempted.
Will they draft you? Well, there is no draft yet so you’re pretty safe, along with everyone else, for the moment.
http://www.sss.gov/FSsurviv.htm
this is what I was thinking of
You will not actually know the answers to these questions until an actual conscription law is passed.
Based on the practices from WWII through Vietnam (that changed periodically), I suspect that you would be fine 1A material in the old system.
There were any number of exemptions and deferments. One could be deferred while attending school (and become eligible upon graduation). One could be exempted for having a “protectred” job such as one necessary for the war effort during WWII or one with various government agencies in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (I went to school with the angry sin of a pharmacist who insisted that every inspector working for the FDA was doing nothing but dodging the draft.) Farmers (or workers on certain types of farms(?)) were exempt at different periods. Ministers, priests, and rabbis were exempt–as were ministerial students who had reached a certain level of studies. Younger ministerial students were given a deferment that was different than, but no more “draft proof” than a regular college deferment, so if one got failing grades, they could not simply hang around the seminary and continue to use the deferment.
But, again, these were the exemptions and deferments in practice between 1940 and 1974. Any new conscription law will quite possibly be different.
“angry son of a pharmacist”
(I have no reason to belive that the pharmacist’s sins (if any) were angry.)
I heard somewhere that the Hudderites (if that really is how they spell their name) were exempt from draft, because their religion forbids any killing. This would work for any other member of a likewise minded religion. Is this true at all? Is that just here in Canada?
How do you go about getting ‘Conscientious Objector’ status?
Whiteboy, this is an IMHO but I don’t think you have any worries. Rangel’s threats of instituting a draft are to make a political point, not to actually fill the military with conscripts. The miltary strucure we have now depends on highly trained people. They couldnt even absorb the vast numbes of people if military service was manditory let alone make use of them.
FWIW It’s Hutterites and I was not aware they were C.O.s but have no reason not to believe it. I am pretty sure Quakers and the Amish were exempt from draft in the US. Both my grandfathers were of draft age in WWII but were excempt because one was a cattle rancher and the other a copper miner.
I agree with tomndebb. Until they actually pass a draft law, the rules of the draft will not be known.
As far as being the only eligible son in a family, that only works on farms in world war 2 and Korea. After vietnam that rule was tossed out.
My point is, dont get stressed out. There is no draft. There will be no draft unless Saddam goes mental (again) WITH Korea too.
If there is a draft, Join the airforce or the navy. Youll be relatively safe there.
Again, without seeing a new law, we can only talk about “the old days.”
Basically, when you registered for the draft, the local board sent out a confirmation form that included a place to note any requests for deferment or exemption. You had to return the form with any supporting documentation. For CO, if you were Amish, Mennonite, or Hutterite, you simply sent in a letter from your bishop. If you were Quaker, there was someone in the church who was authorized to send a similar letter. If you were Catholic or Baptist or some other warlike tribe, you had to assemble lots of letters from everyone you could think of explaining that your convictions regarding war and killing were deeply held and real, even if not explicitly supported by the theology of your religious group.
Then, if you had an open-minded draft board, you might get an exemption, while if your local board was composed of a group of “kil a commie for Christ” types, you had to fight your way up the bureaucracy in the appeals process.
The Society of Friends organized a whole series of documents and support groups to assist guys trying for CO status and it would not surprise me to find that they have kept that material. They may even have it on a web site.
(You could also make things easier on yourself if you opted for 1-AO instead of 1-O status. 1-O was a complete exemption (I was never sure why that was not IV-O). A 1-AO kept you from handling a weapon, but allowed them to draft you as a medic or medical orderly.)
During Vietnam, working for certain companies exempted you from the draft. For example, my dad basically chose his job because “working for General Electric was better than working for General Westmoreland”
That’s good planning ! Lot’s of people took Phil Och’s Draft Dodger Rag to heart, without fleeing to Canada.
For a draft to become law, a majority of the US Senate will have to vote for it.
You needed worry much. A majority of the enlisted all volunteer military is Black. All the Senators are white, so it’s doubtful they would ever vote to include their own children or grandchildren.
cite?
Not sure about “majority”, but “disproportionately” might be an appropriate word. That was one of the beefs with the student deferment during Vietnam – the fact that white boys who could get into college and afford to stay there didn’t have to go fight, whereas black boys who could NOT afford college got drafted.
It could be viewed as a form of discrimination, certainly.
More than one “black power” organization made quite a noise about this, even to the point of claiming the government was trying to exterminate the “black American”…
Ah, sweet memories of youth.
Canada loves to take in draft dodgers. Or, if your daddy is a Bush or a Quayle, you can get a prime perfectly safe posting and play with neato jets, claiming that you were ready for battle and serving your country, all the while toking it up like a… a… Bush or a Quayle.
For those not rich or disinclined to move to colder climes, might I suggest becoming gay. The military will not under any circumstances accept an openly gay person. The idea is more frightening than death to them. They are familiar with pretenders who want to avoid getting killed, so you may have to make this convincing. Your deferrment interview will have to be more convincing than “you look hot in a uniform!” You can grow out of this phase later, when you are no longer of draftable age.
Well, I know I am safe. They told me as they were filling out my Medical discharge paperwork that I wouldn’t ever have to worry about it. 
Join the service and break your kneecap in training. Or not. 
I wonder how they would have handled ministers of the Universal life church
Rev. Drachillix 