Blue discharge

A blue discharge (also known as a "blue ticket") was a form of administrative military discharge formerly issued by the United States beginning in 1916. It was neither honorable nor dishonorable. The blue ticket became the discharge of choice for commanders seeking to remove homosexual service members from the ranks. They were also issued disproportionately to African Americans.

Service members holding a blue discharge were subjected to discrimination in civilian life. They were denied the benefits of the G.I. Bill by the Veterans Administration and had difficulty finding work because employers were aware of the negative connotations of a blue discharge. Following intense criticism in the press—especially the black press, because of the high percentage of African Americans who received blue discharges—and in Congress, the blue discharge was discontinued in 1947, replaced by two new classifications: general and undesirable.

The blue discharge was created in 1916 to replace two previous discharge classifications, the administrative discharge without honor and the "unclassified" discharge. The discharges were printed on blue paper, hence the name. They were also sometimes called "blue tickets". One early use of the blue discharge was for service members who had enlisted to fight in World War I while underage, but this practice was abolished by law and all such discharges were upgraded to honorable.

The United States military had a long-standing policy that service members found to be homosexual or to have engaged in homosexual conduct were to be court-martialed for sodomy, imprisoned and dishonorably discharged. However, with the mobilization of troops following the United States' entry into World War II, it became impractical to convene court-martial boards of commissioned officers and some commanders began issuing administrative discharges instead. Several waves of reform addressing the handling of homosexuals in the military resulted in a 1944 policy directive that called for homosexuals to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists, and discharged under Regulation 615-360, section 8 as "unfit for service". It is unknown exactly how many gay and lesbian service members were given blue discharges under this regulation, but in 1946 the Army estimated that it had issued between 49,000 and 68,000 blue discharges, with approximately 5,000 of them issued to homosexuals, while the Navy's estimates of blue-discharge homosexuals was around 4,000. The period of time covered by these estimates is unclear.

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