In the darkness of early morning, Mona McGuire startled awake. A fist beat on the barracks door. Her heart accelerated into a full gallop, and then the yelling began.
Detectives from the Army‘s criminal investigation division had burst into her room. They stripped her bedding, handcuffed her, along with three other female soldiers, and drove them to headquarters for fingerprinting, a mug shot, and hours of questioning.
It was May 1988, and McGuire’s interrogators knew everything — her romantic partner, where she hung out, even her menstrual cycle. Eventually, McGuire admitted that, yes, she had been intimate with women.
It not only ended her Army career at the age of 20, it remains on her record to this day: The military branded McGuire with a biblically archaic crime, forcing her to plead guilty to charges of sodomy and an indecent act to avoid a court-martial and possibly prison.
“I was embarrassed. I was ashamed,” said McGuire, who now lives in suburban Milwaukee.
For 35 years, only her closest friends knew why she left the service.
Yet, even today, in the eyes of the Department of Veterans Affairs — an agency that’s flown pride flags in front of its hospitals — she’s considered an outcast, ineligible for benefits like health care.
It’s an almost unthinkable relic of a discriminatory era that the military is still struggling to repair, advocates say. McGuire is among as many as 100,000 veterans forced out of the military because…
