Dornan’s Candidacy and Gays in Military

The headline on the story of Bob Dornan’s campaign, “Dornan Still Tilting at Windmills” (Feb. 19), lends an air of whimsy and shabby gallantry to a man whose venomous hatred toward gays and lesbians is openly proclaimed in the House. Cervantes’ hero tilted at windmills in a well-meaning, if misguided, expression of human- kind’s nobler instincts. Sadly, Dornan’s bigotry expresses our worst.

JIM WEINSTEIN

Los Angeles

* Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) column (Feb. 6) about my provision to honorably discharge, with health benefits, within six months, HIV-infected military personnel adds nothing to the facts.

The return of Magic Johnson makes good fodder for defending HIV-infected military personnel, except the military isn’t the NBA. Unlike Magic, HIV-infected military personnel are by definition unable to carry out duties for which they were trained. These personnel are ill and disabled (again, by definition, Americans With Disabilities Act). The difference is that Magic would not only be unable to play basketball in the military, he would also be unable to do anything that defines military life: brought home from overseas, no further deployability to any of the world’s 191 other nations, no aircraft, no ships, no combat, no field training of combatants, no guns or pistol range, no combat engineering, no medical service assignments, no assignments that you see in those gung-ho military commercials.

Boxer is simply dead wrong in stating that the “military strongly objected” to the discharge of HIV-infected soldiers. All of the services’ surgeons general support the new policy. The problem for Boxer is that the only “military” she quotes are civilian Clinton appointees, now imprecisely identified as the “Pentagon.”

Other non-deployables such as asthma sufferers are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, treated and then, if evaluated as a “nonlimited” case, they are redeployed. The same with cases of diabetes, heart disease and cancer in remission or cured. The dilemma with HIV is that this disease is irreversible.

Boxer calls me “un-American” for authoring this policy. Let me tell you what is un-American. Vio- lating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits visits to a brothel (off limits with or without the 100% infected prostitutes), the use of illicit drugs and homosexual sodomy--the three primary ways HIV is acquired by military personnel now, that’s un-American. Putting yourself in high-risk health situations, putting at risk all the training money invested in you, causing other soldiers or sailors to be deployed overseas to Bosnia or elsewhere--to replace you, while they leave a wife and children-- that’s un-American.

REP. ROBERT K. DORNAN

R-Garden Grove