Greetings, You are Hereby Ordered to Report …

In April 1969, shortly after my 18th birthday, I drove down to the Selective Service Board in Santa Ana, California and registered for the draft.

I had no choice; it was the law. Checking off the boxes on the medical forms, I froze in my tracks when I read this question: “Do you have any homosexual tendencies?” I was in love with a boy. Did that count?
 
By 1969 the United States’ involvement in the war in Southeast Asia was at its peak. Three and a half million men were serving in uniform, and about a third of those were conscripts. The 1968 Tet Offensive had forced Lyndon Baines Johnson not to seek a second term as President of the United States. Meanwhile, Americans, who had been told the war was nearly won, realized that they had been deceived by the military. General Westmoreland, to calm an anxious nation, called for 300,000 additional troops to turn back the Viet Cong’s Liberation Front and to secure Saigon.
 
In Physical Education class, the boys at my high school were being trained for boot camp as much as they were being trained for basketball camp. When we ran laps, we carried other boys on our backs. We sweated to strenuous calisthenics, including jumping jacks, push ups, set ups, pull ups and throw ups. The coaches thought they were doing us a favor. They knew where many of us would be heading, since they saw few divinity students, sons of politicians, and even college-bound material among us middle class Southern California seniors. Of course, it also never even occurred to them that there might be sissies or queers in our gung-ho group. Yep, a Vietnam rice paddy was the future for most of the Class of ‘69 at Rancho Alamitos.
 
Even my Senior year counselor, more or less, told me that I should just up and enlist so that I could pick the branch of the armed services I wanted rather then wait to be drafted. He looked at my grades and laughed when I asked about college. Damn him.
 
The draft was a big deal in 1969. During the 1968 presidential election, Richard Milhous Nixon had campaigned on a promise to end the draft. Well, the last conscripted men reported for duty in Vietnam in June 1973, which was of little consequence to me my senior year.
 
Now I had been opposed to the Vietnam War for most of my high school days, which put me at odds with my World War II navy veteran dad. Ever since my older sister had started dating navy guys, I was a pacifist. My sister’s dates often brought their lonely buddies to my dad’s home for supper and sometimes for a place to sleep. My dad being a navy guy never turned anyone away, so we were kind of the USO for my street.

I could not stand the thought of these handsome young men being shipped off to war. I am also sure that my ardent opposition to the war came from the fact that frequently some of these young sailors were assigned to my full size bed when the living room’s pull-out couch was full. Young men in navy skivvies. Oh, the sacrifices I made for the war effort, having to share my teenage bed with 19 year old seamen!
 
However, by April 1969 I was not infatuated with lonely sailor boys, but in love with John Cunningham. Nevertheless, there was no way was I going to check off that I had homosexual tendencies on the selective service official government form. Besides, I wasn’t a homosexual. I was just in love with John and we would never have sex. Hell, John didn’t even know that I loved him, so why should I tell the draft board? Ultimately I didn’t.
 
Later, I would learn from others that even if I would have checked the box stating I had homosexual tendencies, the draft board would have demanded proof before considering me for a 4-F deferment.
 
I had no clue at the time that many straight men who wanted to avoid the draft were claiming to be gay! The radical anti-war magazine Realist at the time told draft dodgers that the best way out of the draft was to be a “hoaxusexual.” A movie made in 1969 called The Gay Deceivers documented this phenomenon, detailing the exploits of two straight guys who had to pretend to be homosexuals to avoid the draft.
 
After turning in my paper work I was issued my draft card, which gave me a temporary student deferment because I was still in high school. The card came with a warning that I had to have it on my person at all times, subject to legal penalties. Congress, in 1965, had made it a crime to “knowingly destroy” or “knowingly mutilate” the selective service card. In 1968 the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a draft card burner who had been sentenced to six years in prison. I was even informed that any police officer could stop me at any time and ask to see my draft card; so the paper card became a constant reminder that my body was not my own.
 
After registering for the draft I began to attend a Let Us Vote (LUV) Club, a meeting of politically-minded students at Rancho who thought that 18-year-olds should be allowed to vote. The opinion was that if we were old enough to die for our country, we should be allowed to vote for those who sent us off to war. Even though I thought the LUV Club views were “right on,” I actually joined because John Cunningham was a member.
 
At one of the weekly meetings I asked to see John’s draft card to compare it to mine. When he flippantly mentioned that he hadn’t registered yet and I nearly flipped out. His birthday was last January and here it was near the end of April, and he hadn’t registered! The law said that one had to register within two weeks of one’s 18th birthday, and John had gone almost 12 weeks.
 
The very next day I convinced John that he had to register before he got into serious trouble. I drove him down to the Draft Board in my blue 1963 Ford Galaxy. As I waited for him to fill out his paperwork, listening to the Spiral Staircase’s “I Love You More Today then Yesterday: on the AM car radio, I wondered how he felt about the question “Do you have homosexual tendencies?” I was afraid I knew the answer.