A Few Bad Men

"THEY WERE KICKING HIM AND PUNCHING HIM, MAKing comments like 'Fag, you should die! Tell Bill Clinton about this!' " So reported an observer of the alleged bashing by three young Marines based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, of gay male Crae Pridgen, the latest victim of antihomosexual violence in the wake of the Clinton Administration's endorsement of gay membership in the military.

In San Francisco four sailors and two Marines were sentenced to a year in jail after they pleaded guilty to beating a homosexual man lured from a bar, and seaman Terry Helvey was charged by the Navy in the bludgeoning murder of gay shipmate Allen Schindler near the U.S. naval base at Sasebo, Japan. Thus, even as opponents of Clinton's easing of restrictions against gay military personnel raised the specter of unrestrained homosexuals running rampant through their ranks, more tangible threats to military discipline were coming from the straight and narrow-minded already in uniform.