More reason for the US to change 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

The policy is getting more and more ridiculous...I bet there are many 'out' soldiers in the military....who really cares these days???

A gay soldier says he disclosed his sexuality to his superiors, even offering graphic proof, and was neither discharged nor reprimanded, despite the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality, CBS News is preparing to report.

Army Sgt. Darren Manzella appears in a Lesley Stahl report on gays in the wartime U.S. military to be broadcast Sunday on 60 Minutes.

Manzella, a medic who served in Iraq for a year, currently serves as medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Kuwait, where he tells Stahl that he is “out” to his entire chain of command, including a three-star general.

After leaving Iraq, he says he started receiving anonymous emails warning him about his openness that suggested he was being watched, so he went to his commander to head off an investigation he felt was coming.

"I didn’t know how else to do it,” he tells Stahl, acknowledging that he initiated an investigation of himself by violating the policy. “I felt more comfortable being the one to say, ‘This is what is real,'" Manzella says.

He then says his commander reported him, as he was obliged to do, and then “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights,” he tells 60 Minutes.

He turned over pictures of him and his boyfriend, including video of a passionate kiss, to aid the investigation.

But he tells Stahl he was surprised by the outcome.

"I was told to go back to work. There was no evidence of homosexuality," Manzella says.

"'You’re not gay,'" he says his superiors told him.

The response confused him and, he says, the closest a superior officer came to addressing his sexuality was to say “I don’t care if you’re gay or not.”

Manzella’s commanders may not be the only ones who are indifferent to gays serving openly under them, 60 Minutes reports. Discharges of gay soldiers have dropped dramatically since the Afghan and Iraq wars began, from 1,200 a year in 2001 to barely 600 now. With the military struggling to recruit and retain soldiers, gay soldiers claim that commanders are reluctant to discharge critical personnel in the middle of a war.