Pentagon says gays are nuts

The Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is dumb enough. But now a document has been unearthed that outlines the Army's policies for discharging soldiers. It says homosexuality is a "defect," along with mental retardation and personality disorders.

Up until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders listed homosexuality as a clinical mental disorder. A vote that year resulted in the acknowledgment by the psychiatric community that gays were no crazier than breeders.

But researchers at the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found that the Pentagon still thinks gays are loony.

Nathaniel Frank, a senior fellow at the CSSMM thinks the policy speaks volumes about the military.

"The policy reflects the (Defense) department's continued misunderstanding of homosexuality and makes it more difficult for gays and lesbians to access mental health services," Frank said.

The famous compassionate Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is being asked by members of Congress and James H. Scully Jr., head of the APA, to reconsider the policy.

"Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 -- a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science," Scully Jr said in a letter to the Defense Department earlier this month.