Word: steffan
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...daily uniform and haircut inspections and other close scrutiny. Former Staff Sergeant Thomas Paniccia filed suit in U.S. District Court in Arizona last week to salvage his 11-year career, which ended in October after he, like Meinhold, acknowledged his homosexuality on national television. Former Naval Academy student Joseph Steffan is suing to reverse his ouster just weeks before his scheduled graduation in 1987. Former Army National Guard Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, a Vietnam veteran who served 26 years until she was identified as a lesbian, is suing to get her job back...
...about the policy, the armed forces have long banned homosexuals, arguing that they undermine morale and could be vulnerable to blackmail. Last week U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch came up with a new reason for excluding them in a ruling upholding the U.S. Naval Academy's treatment of Joseph Steffan, who was forced to resign in 1987 after his commanders heard he was gay. It was the need to protect soldiers and sailors from AIDS...
...services already screen all personnel and recruits for the AIDS virus and reject applicants who test positive. And Defense Department lawyers did not raise the AIDS issue in arguing the academy's case. Steffan's attorney, Paula Ettelbrick, said Gasch "reached out to grasp some other rationale" for barring homosexuals because the old anti-gay arguments had lost credibility. Gasch made his attitude clear during a hearing, when he called Steffan a "homo...
...lesbian soldiers, the Pentagon prohibition reflects only deep- seated prejudice. "It's based on the assumption that all homosexuals are sex maniacs and somehow incapable of acting maturely," says Joe Steffan, a star student who resigned from the Naval Academy in 1987 two weeks before final exams, after his superiors heard that he was gay. According to Allan Berube, author of Coming Out Under Fire, 100,000 to 200,000 of the 2 million members of the U.S. armed forces are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Most elude detection by being discreet. "The question is not, 'What happens...
...were in the same trench as a gay person?' " says Aric Nissen, 20, a University of Minnesota junior and political-science major enrolled in ROTC. "My response is that I feel it's one more person we could use to help us get out of the trench." Joe Steffan found that while homophobic jokes were standard fare at Annapolis, "a lot of that is a facade. During my last few days, people I barely knew were coming up to me, shaking my hand and saying, 'I'm really sorry this is happening, and I really don't agree with this...