The Arizona Daily Star reports on what Pvt. Kyle Lawson has had to endure:
For weeks, the 19-year-old Tucson native has been sleeping on a cot in his drill sergeant’s office to protect him from further attacks because he is gay. He’s already had his nose broken — and says he also was threatened with a knife — after a friend let Lawson’s secret slip at a party attended by members of the 309th Military Intelligence Battalion, a training unit at Fort Huachuca 75 miles southeast of Tucson.
Lawson didn’t out himself to the military, someone else did.
Lawson was punched in the face by a fellow 309th soldier at the off-post party on Oct. 29, according to a police report of the incident. The soldier told police Lawson made sexually suggestive remarks. Sierra Vista police Officer Darryl Scott, who investigated and laid a charge of felony aggravated assault, said in an interview that “there was no provocation.”
The Army chose not to prosecute the charge, for reasons fort officials say they are not at liberty to explain.
A week after the first attack, Lawson said a second soldier threatened him with a knife outside a barracks as word spread about his sexual orientation. Lawson said the soldiers who accosted him received little punishment from the Army. Fort Huachuca officials say neither case was mishandled.
Perhaps the cases weren’t mishandled because it’s not official Army policy to treat assaults on gay soldiers as worthy of the same treatment as assaults on straight soldiers? The first person who assaulted Lawson was not provoked, that’s the official police conclusion, but evidently the soldier hasn’t been seriously disciplined. Why? Maybe because the army doesn’t think he did anything very wrong. Ditto with the one who threatened Lawson with a knife. Had they done the same things to a Jewish or black soldier, do you think their cases would have been handled the same?
After all, now Lawson is leaving the military, and isn’t that part of the point? If it takes a few physical assaults and threats of grievous injury to get those queers out of the military, isn’t that justified?
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