Homosexuals have been excluded from our society since our country's beginning, giving them unequal rights. The Emancipation Proclamation gave freedom to blacks from slavery in the 1800's, and women were given the privileges of males in the early 1900's with the women's suffrage movement. But everyone still knows the feeling of the nation in dealing with the minority of homosexuals. Hate crimes are still happening to this day. The public is just now dealing with the struggle of Homosexuals to gain more rights in the United States. The big question today in Homosexual's rights, is the right to be a part of our country's Military Forces. .
The Homosexual struggle with our Nation's Armed Forces has been acquiring damage and swift blows for a long time now, and finally they are beginning to fight back. With the public knowledge of initiation rights into many elite groups of the military, the public is beginning to realize how exclusive the military can be. One cadet said after hell week in the Marines, "It was almost like joining a fraternity, but the punishments were 1000 times worse than ever imagined, and the Administration did not pretend to turn there back, they were instrumental in the brutality" ("Issues and Controversies"). The intense pressure of hell week caused many wounded Marines, and even death. People who are not meant to be in the Military are usually weeded out during these initiations, and forced either to continue on or be discharged.
The military in the United States has become a society where only few survive. In a survey taken in 1990, the United States population on a whole is believed to consist of 13-15% of Homosexuals. With so many Homosexuals in the United States, how can the military prove its exclusion policy against Homosexuals correct and moral? Through the "long standing tradition and policy," says one Admiral of the U.S. Navy. But is it fair or correct? That is the question Capitol Hill deals with even today.
