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Sexual orientation and military service

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Violence faced by LGBT people in the military
Physical, sexual, psychological (harassment, bullying) violence faced by LGBT is a fact of life for many LGBT identified persons. In an inherently violent environment, LGBT people may face violence unique to their community in the course of military service.

For instance, the Israeli Defense Force does not ask the sexual orientation of its soldiers, however half of the homosexual soldiers who serve in the IDF suffer from violence and homophobia. LGBT soldiers are often victims of verbal and physical violence and for the most part, commanders ignore the phenomenon.

SAPRO, the organization responsible for the oversight of Department of Defense (DoD - USA) sexual assault policy, produces the “Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Member (WGRA)”: The 2012 report doesn’t have any paragraph studying the specific situation of LGBT people. The study focuses on men and women. The specificity of the violence faced by LGBT people is not considered.

In the Australian army, the problem is not known officially, only few cases of harassment and discrimination involving gays and lesbians have been recorded. A researcher mentioned that "one would not want to be gay and in the military": Although there has been no major public scandal regarding harassment of gays, this does not mean that such behavior does not occur, but it has been under-studied. Generally, however, incidents of discrimination or harassment brought to the attention of commanders are handled appropriately, incidents in which peers who had made inappropriate remarks are disciplined by superiors promptly and without reservation.

Discrimination faced by LGBT people in the military in militaries without explicit limitations or explicit welcoming
This section will explore the question of legality versus practice: In some militaries where LGBT people are allowed to serve openly, there are continued practical limitations to their service or inequality of entitlement.

In the US army, six states (Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia) are refusing to comply with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s order that gay spouses of National Guard members be given the same federal marriage benefits as heterosexual spouses, forcing couples to travel hours round trip to the nearest federal installation. Furthermore, some benefits offered on bases, like support services for relatives of deployed service members, could still be blocked. Further, throughout the US army, transgender people are suffering from discrimination : they are prohibited from serving openly because of medical regulations that label them as mentally unstable. At the contrary, in Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom, as of 2010, when civil partnerships became legal in the respective countries, military family benefits followed the new laws, without discrimination.

Fear of discrimination may prevent militaries to be open about their sexual orientation. In some cases, in Belgium, homosexual personnel have been transferred from their unit if they have been "too open with their sexuality". The Belgian military also continues to reserve the right to deny gay and lesbian personnel high-level security clearances, for fear they may be susceptible to blackmail. In 1993, a study showed that in Canada, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Norway, the number of openly homosexual service members was small, representing only a minority of homosexuals actually serving. Serving openly may make their service less pleasant or impede their careers, even though there were no explicit limitations to serve. Thus service members who acknowledged their homosexuality were "appropriately" circumspect in their behavior while in military situations; they did not call attention to themselves. . Today, in the Danish army, LGBT military personnel refrain from being completely open about their homosexuality. Until training is completed and a solid employment is fixed they fear losing respect, authority and privileges, or in worst cases their job in the Danish army. In 2010, the same updated study showed that in Australia, Canada, Germany, Isreal, Italy and United Kingdom, no special treatment to prevent discrimination was in place in those armies, the issue is not specifically addressed, it is left to the leadership discretion. Commanders told that sexual harassment of women by men poses a far greater threat to unit performance than anything related to sexual orientation.

To the contrary, Dutch military directly addressed the issue of enduring discrimination, by forming the Homosexuality and Armed Forces Foundation, a trade union that continues to represent gay and lesbian personnel to the ministry of defense, for a more tolerant military culture. Although homosexuals in the Dutch military rarely experience any explicitly aggressive acts against them, signs of homophobia and cultural insensitivity are still present.