Its been brought to light in a story on World News This Morning that the Pentagon has a policy document which states in a section on "defects", that homosexuality is a "disorder", and puts it in a category along with mental retardation, and personality disorders.

Why am I not surprised, this brought to you by our "don't ask don't tell" military..
A Pentagon spokesperson said this policy document is "under review." Its needs to be more than just under review, it needs to be totally stripped from the Pentagon policy language period! :mad:

link

[ June 20, 2006, 05:48 AM: Message edited by: hockeyTom ]

Why am I not surprised that this is a by-product of the Bush Regime? Leave it to the Bush uber-conservative underlings to come up with the piece of garbage.

The document appears to have been drafted in 1996 (and listed by DOD as current in 2003) which, correct me if I am wrong, was not during the timeframe of the current administration. While the status has not changed under the GW Bush administration, it was put forth under the Clinton regime.

UCLA, it's clear the Pentagon's policy flies in the face of psychiatric knowledge, but what's less clear is that this willful ignorance "is a by-product of the Bush regime." I've yet to see anything that marks this as anything other than a continuation of the Pentagon's policy on homosexuality since WW II. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this fact and there is, in fact, some evidence that this represents a new, post-Clinton administration departure from settled policy.

Clinton regime???? :confused: :confused:

re·gime also ré·gime (r-zhm, r-)
n.

1.
A. A form of government: a fascist regime.
B. A government in power; administration: suffered under the new regime.
2. A prevailing social system or pattern.
3. The period during which a particular administration or system prevails.
4. A regulated system, as of diet and exercise; a regimen.

Yeah, you know, as in the attempt to impose Hillarycare, just to keep the metaphors straight.

Out of curiosity, I want to know your take on the current healthcare system because most of your arguments seem valid and it seems that most of the Republicans I know hammer Hillary's idea on healthcare without giving any reason as to why other than the hatred that is directed towards Hillary and the socialist argument. When Hillary's idea was proposed, I was in middle school and not caring about politics or the news at the time.

Why would America consider having homosexuals serving in the military to be any more dangerous than the UK or other NATO allies that permit, and in the case of the UK actively recruit, homosexuals to serve?

JK, My own view is that the current healthcare emphasis does not stress prevention and personal responsibility as much as it should. A LOT of money is wasted on people who will not refrain from self-destructive habits - smoking, excessive drinking, drugs, promiscuity and unsafe sex - but then come demanding cures for the conditions they contributed to cause, often clogging the system with unwarranted demands for care. If there is to be "universal health care for all," then there must be universal responsibility by all so insured. I also believe that only American citizens should be covered under any such program. Hillarycare addressed neither of these concerns.

On the other side of the equation, there's not enough emphasis on making healthcare more efficient by rooting out repetitive procedures, and prosecuting those who abuse it from the providers' perspective. My office has a whole division dedicated to rooting out Medi-Cal fraud, just as we have separate divisions dealing with wayward MDs, DDS, and the like. Get rid of the crooks and charlatans and you also improve the system. Hillarycare was similarly deficient here.

The same goes for insurance companies who wrongly profit off medical claims, at whatever point on the healthcare delivery spectrum. Since these companies are essentially providing a public service, I believe they may properly be regulated more heavily than purely private businesses.

Finally, I resist most limits on medical malpractice recoveries because they are arbitrary and do not really discourage bad doctors from continuing their malpractice. Any easy solution is at hand: take a portion of a patient's general damages for pain and suffering - not their compensatory damages for bills, lost wages, etc. - and put it into a fund dedicated to prosecuting medical and insurance malpractice and fraud. That way, the lawyers continue to have an incentive to take on these case, their clients get their recoveries, and the state gets a source of revenue with which to continue improving healthcare delivery.

Gmg's final paragraph is one of the most sensible things I've read by him in a while. Please propose this idea both to Republicans and Democrats as often as you can. One recent report I read showed that since medical malpractice awards have been arbitrarily limited by laws, insurance companies have continued to increase insurance premiums on doctors and other medical personnel, thus increasing their profit margin while also increasing the burdens on healthcare providers and driving up the costs of healthcare.

The policy appears to date from the Clinton years, so it should have been stricken then. There is absolute zero reason for it to remain now. There are many things, particularly involving our military, for which Bush and his associates deserve the harshest criticism, but this isn't one of them.