Thirty-five years ago, Lisa Weiszmiller received an “other than honorable” disharge from the U.S. Army for being a lesbian, but that has all changed.
Weiszmiller recently received an honorable discharge certificated backdated to June 22, 1979. She told The Oklahoman that the treatment she endured during training in Alabama was “barbaric” and left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“These are queers! These are lesbians! Stay away from these homosexual women,” Weiszmiller recalled the taunts to the Oklahoma newspaper. “They tried everything they could to try to break us down to what they thought we were.”
Then, shortly before she was to be processed out and sent to Germany, military police came to the barracks and performed a search of the lockers. Weiszmiller says the reason for the search was that she and another female soldier were seen at a part of just women.
Weiszmiller recalls that at the end of the ordeal, a total of 62 people were kicked out of the company. The treatment from the Army, Weiszmiller says, left her traumatized and she slipped into methamphetamine abuse.
According to the "Restore Honor to Service Members Act," “more than 100,000 service members are estimated to have been discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation.”
These discharges threaten former service members from accessing benefits earned through their time in service.
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