Pray Away the Gay: US Navy Edition

In response to a long-ago FOIA request for 

Information regarding Navy policy toward sailors who have participated “in converstion [sic], therapy, reorientation therapy, reparative theory, or other programs designed to 'cure' homosexuality.”

the United States Navy, like the United States Air Force, has confirmed that it does not recognize the primary methodologies evangelicals and others in the homophobe community promote to handle the gay community.

It seems that if Ted Haggard had been a US sailor, his claims that he had prayed away the gay would fall on death ears.

NSA Technical Ship History

Below is a highly redacted, but still provides the broad outlines of policy and history of the NSA/US Navy’s Technical Research Ship Program written by Ms. Julie Alger. The history which, according to its preface, was written in early Spring 1970, is an early account of the NSA/US Navy’s Technical Research Ship Program. These ships were floating SIGINT/COMINT/ELINT(1) platforms that collected intelligence from hostile targets by trawling off-shore and scooping up whatever intelligence they could gather. The most famous of these was the USS Liberty which was attacked and nearly sunk by Israeli forces during the Six-Day-War. The USS Pueblo, seized by North Korean forces in 1968, is not mentioned in this report, but was a ship of similar function for a US Navy only program.

NSA Technical Ship Paper


(1) SIGINT= Signals Intelligence/ COMINT = Communications Intelligence/ ELINT = Electronics Intelligence