Mideast edition, Sunday, June 10, 2007

A sailor who outed himself is out of the Navy for good.

Navy officials said Friday that a third set of discharge papers — this time noting “homosexual conduct” and barring any recall to service — have been issued for Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Knight.

Though privacy rules forbid the Navy from releasing the documents, officials said a recall code of RE-4 was listed and that the papers effectively end any possibility of future service.

As of Friday, Knight said he had not received the DD-214 discharge papers, but was not surprised they were reissued.

In early May, Knight was the subject of a Stars and Stripes story detailing how he had served a yearlong tour in Kuwait as an openly gay man. Shortly after, Navy officials said that, based in part on statements Knight made afterward, he would be honorably discharged under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Last week, Knight released the only discharge papers he had received after his Individual Ready Reserve tour with a customs battalion in Kuwait was completed. Those papers made no mention of homosexual conduct and made him eligible for active duty recall until 2009.

However, Navy officials said those documents were issued before Knight’s story was published. The third, and final, DD-214 had already been issued before that story ran, Navy officials said Friday.

There was no explanation from either side on why Knight had not received the paperwork.

Knight had since gone to work for a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group working to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a compromise policy enacted in 1993.

The issue of gays in the military gained a second life earlier this year when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace said in a newspaper interview that homosexuality was immoral and not conducive to good military service.

The policy has since been a subject in both the Republican and Democratic presidential debates.