Homosexuality is not inherently a discipline problem. The activities supplied here about the Coast Guard officer are discipline problems that verge onto criminal behavior. So, there's no valid comparison here.

Captain Hilts:
A great character from a great movie based on dramatic deeds by a group of courageous men. Good choice.

CPT Noval,

The real thing that this USCG officer got busted for was fraternization (boffing enlisted folks, if you're male or female, is the real no-no) and, what's more, having an affair. (If you read to the end you see that he was married. That's what all that "person who was not his wife" stuff was about. It's legal milspeak for, "He was having an affair." We can make an educated guess where the initial tip-off might have come from.) That is an out-and-out abuse of power in the first case, and immoral in the second.

The two charges of sodomy were just the normal "throwing the book" that most prosecutors engage in. After investigation, military lawyers write up charges for all the elements of the UCMJ which are affected. I think Tom would agree with me that the sodomy sections in the UCMJ, which are still on the books and apply regardless of sexual orientation, or indeed, marriage, are blinkered holdovers from the 1950s. If we actually prosecuted those things (and in the military definition, remember, "sodomy" applies to oral sex too), the US Army would lose 50% of it's tankers, 100% of its infantry, and the entire USMC would have to take a hike! But since it's Congress that writes our laws, and there's no way a sitting politician on the right could survive even passively supporting a vote to remove those laws, they'll probably stay on the books. So basically, except in cases like these, those particular laws are almost completely and totally ignored.

In other words, they are almost NEVER, used. Certainly not in the GITM issues. It's only in cases like this, adultery, fraternization, and downloading porn onto gov't computers and sexting from your gov't phone that trigger the whole shooting match.

LTC Bob Bateman

Bob, this is a late reply, but better late than never. I understand completely your point - having drawn up a charge sheet myself, and having been a defense counsel too I have seen this tendency at work.

This is particularly a specialty of Marine Corps prosecutors - their charge sheets for simple fistfight will see it charged up as 1) assault, 2) battery, 3) attempted murder, and to round things up they will add in three or four specifications wholly unrelated, such failure to repair for being 5 minutes late to formation, disrespect for failing to salute the lieutenant when he was 25 feet away, and the ever popular disobeying a general order by being unshaven at 630am).

I think that criminally charging someone for adultery (with a person unrelated to the military), oral sex, anal sex, or dirty talk with one's lover, as it appears Captain Hamilton was, is simply a stupid waste of resources. And a bad idea to boot, since as you say, if we enforce these "standards" there will be nobody left to fight our wars. It encourages cynicism and disrespect for the law and the legal system to single out one malefactor and hold him to a completely different standard than everybody else is.