By the reckoning of the U.S. Air Force, Dr. John Hensala accepted $70,000 worth of government-paid medical education on the condition that he would give the service four years of active duty in return.
Now that it’s time to pay up, however, Hensala is resisting. He argues that it’s the Air Force’s fault, because it won’t allow openly gay people like himself to serve. From this vantage point, however, this looks like a simple case of a man trying to wriggle out of a deal. He should get no help in that from the courts.
Hensala, 35, signed up for the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program in 1986. The Air Force paid for him to earn his medical degree at Northwestern University, which was followed by a three-year residency at Yale University and a two-year fellowship in child psychiatry. During all this time, he served a total of 20 weeks on active duty.
But when the Air Force informed him in 1994 that he would have to begin his four-year active duty stint the next year, Hensala hired a lawyer. And a week later, he informed the service that he had come to the realization that he was gay. “I do not believe that this will affect my ability to serve in the Air Force as a child psychiatrist,” he wrote.
The Air Force investigated, and although one investigating officer reported “very strong evidence that Capt. Hensala made the homosexual statement hoping to trigger separation and avoid his active duty commitment,” the service granted Hensala an honorable discharge under President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
As it has done with about 100 others in the medical scholarship program, it then billed him for reimbursement for tuition, books, board and equipment and supply costs.
So Hensala sued. “An employer who fires someone just because they are gay . . . ,” he said, “I don’t think it’s the right of the employer to say, `You owe us this money.'”
He would prefer, perhaps, “All is forgiven”?
The fact is that Hensala committed himself to his deal with the Air Force when it was stated military policy that homosexuals could not serve.
He says now that he didn’t know at the time that he was gay. But he apparently told some members of his family about his homosexuality as long ago as 1988. He didn’t bother to tell the Air Force, however, until his education was complete and he was told he would have to report for his four-year active duty tour.
This would not be a problem if the armed forces would simply drop the bar to service by open homosexuals. But that is another issue for another day.
Dr. Hensala’s case seems simple enough: A deal is a deal and he ought to drop his lawsuit and pay his debt.
