S.D. Sailor’s Case Isn’t Policy Change on AIDS by Navy

No change in the Navy’s policy toward AIDS or homosexuality “has been announced or is forthcoming” despite the secretary of the Navy’s granting of medical retirement to a San Diego sailor fatally stricken with AIDS, a Navy spokesman said Tuesday.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Bryon G. Kinney, 28, died of AIDS on Monday. Four days before, Navy Secretary John Lehman granted Kinney full disability retirement. Lehman’s decision overruled a Navy administrative board decision in June. The board unanimously declared that Kinney should be discharged without medical or disability benefits because he was a homosexual, according to Julie Swan, a public affairs spokeswoman for the Navy.

The ruling by Lehman was, however, an “isolated, one-time situation,” said Lt. Gene Elliot, spokesman for the Southwest Region Naval Medical Command.

“At the time Secretary Lehman announced that decision to allow 100% disability to Bryon Kinney, there was no announcement regarding a change in policy,” Elliot said. “At this point, no one has uttered a word about reevaluation or reassessment of the policy.”

Before Lehman granted the retirement to Kinney, who was a medical corpsman for seven years before he was diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency syndrome in November, 1984, Lehman had put his discharge on “hold” because he “decided that it would be more appropriate to proceed through the disability evaluation system,” said Lt. Stephen Pietropaoli, a Navy Department spokesman.

According to Pietropaoli, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and homosexuality are separate issues handled under two separate Navy policies. AIDS is a medical issue, he said, and is handled like any other debilitating disease. Homosexuality, however, directly violates a Navy policy stating: “Homosexuality is incompatible with military life and seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission,” Pietropaoli said.

A spokesman from the Department of Defense said tha, of the 100 people in the military who have been treated for AIDS, only two have been denied an honorable discharge without medical retirement benefits.

Lt. Col. Pete Wyro said that the Department of Defense “has expressed a desire in implementing some methodology or policy stating to what extent medical information can be released.”

It was Kinney’s medical records that were used to accuse him of being homosexual at the administrative board hearing in June.