Conduct Unbecoming

There is a country where citizens are interrogated for long hours and threatened with prison or the loss of their children if they do not cooperate, where citizens are ordered to denounce others, to give information - often entirely fabricated - dispatching people to ignominy and jail. And if they refuse, they are threatened with prison. This country is America, and the subjects under attack are people who have chosen to serve their nation. They are military personnel. They are lesbians and gay men. And they are hunted day in and day out.

Author Randy Shilts follows his best-seller And the Band Played On with a book of even greater power and sweep, as he investigates the situation of lesbians and gays in the military over the past three decades, revealing for the first time that some of the most celebrated soldiers in American history were homosexual (including the Father of the United States Army). Five years of interviews with nearly 1,100 gay service people have uncovered extraordinary stories of heroism, persecution, and increasing resistance while documenting the creation of a vast gay subculture within the armed forces. With thousands of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Shilts offers the first in-depth look at the behind-the-scenes decision-making that resulted in the fierce purges of gays in the military over the past thirty years.

With its epic scope this book will provide the basis of a national debate not only on the issue of lesbians and gays in the military but on the broader issue of the place of homosexuals in American life.