They'd Better Be Buying a Lot of "Morale"
Last year, as we noted in a "Data" in our print edition, the Government Accountability Office pegged the cumulative cost of our military's ban on openly gay servicemembers at about $95 million over ten years, the estimated amount spent to replace discharged gay soldiers. A new study carried out by U.C. Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military comes up with a much higher figure: at least $368.8 million. At that price, we could've just bought a dozen or so F-16s and created an all-gay airborne unit, after the model of the highly successful Sacred Band of Thebes.