My sympathy is gone

They are indeed a different breed. But I guess you can't fix other's ignorance and phobias. That is their problems.

gjampol, your last sentence shows how little you know about the current military. My son served with a guy everyone suspected was gay, but he was a good soldier, in Iraq and back home, so no one cared. Most gay soldiers are left alone. Young people today don't carry half the prejudice their parents did. The irony of this story is my son's friend had a back injury and didn't want to deploy again, so he came out of the closet in a way that couldn't be ignored -- he openly made a pass at a sergeant. He was honorably discharged.

I am confused about you condemnation of all soldiers and saying they should all die. The movie clearly showed most of Barry Winchell's fellow soldiers could've cared less about his personnal life.

Love the compassion and understanding you show. Tolerance is not a one way street, so remember that you are just a few opinions shy of fitting in with the Phelps. How weak minded you must be to have your views and opinions swayed by a movie. You are probably the same kind of person who laps up everything an actor or actress has to say about certain issues.

How on earth could you say something like this? It's one thing to sympathize with someone who has been beaten up by soldiers in a film, it's quite another to condemn all soldiers to death. Do movies dictate your sentiments? Your beliefs? Wake up, it's all a shadowplay. It is meant to tweak your brain, but it is not meant to be something that actually guides your life or tells you what and how to think. For goodness' sake, get a grip. Tomorrow you might see a movie in which a soldier saves a gay man's life (I am sure it has happened more than once in war). Will you then decide that all soldiers go to Heaven?

I know nothing of the attitude of men in the military, but I know several people who have trained in the army, and they all say that they are the "biggest bunch of bigots you will ever meet"; however, I have not experienced it personally, so I am making no judgement on that.

But, as msgoodwrench29 said, in this film, it is shown that most of his fellow soldiers cared nothing for his private life, and it was only Glover, when feeling picked upon by Winchell, that he began to deride him as a *beep* Fisher also made several references to this, but he was shown to be sexually confused anyway.

I know and have known several gay men in the army and marines. Today the attitude is not like it was when Winchell was murdered. Most of the guys I know are out and their unit knows about them. But since it has no bearing on their job no one bothers them. And yes I live in Nashville so many of these guys I know are at Ft. Campbell. Go to the gay dating websites and search the word army or marines or military in the profiles and see how many you find with active military guys showing their faces and even in their uniforms on base and in Iraq. Times have changed.

And your comment about body bags was narrow and disgusting.

Yout level of hatred and generalizations approach that of those you'd condemn for it.
I was in the Navy from '79-83, was an avionics tech in a front line fighter squadron deploying out of "fightertown USA", Miramar, the base you see in "Topgun". Our time was split about evenly between being there or onboard the USS Coral Sea.
My immediate supervisor was gay, didn't take long to find out as after about a month in the unit after some beers offbase at somebody's house, he made an awkward pass at me.
I told him while I was flattered I wasn't gay and wasn't even on the fence, in the next three years he respected that and nothing ever happened again- I trusted that enough we became roommates for awhile off base with another shipmate from our shop.
It became clear that his sexual identity was probably the worst kept secret in the squadron, and nobody- I mean nobody, cared. Why?
Well not only was he a likeable guy that got along with everyone EXCEPT for superior officers who were more interested in games than job performance, but his job performance wasn't just the best in the squadron, not the best in the air wing, but he was probably the most experienced and competant fire control technician on the west coast, if not the fleet. Usually when the techs have a problem we can't solve we call the factory who sends out engineers to help us. Westinghouse and Hughes, who made the radar and computers in the F-4's we flew, regularly called our shop to get HIS advice on a problem in other squadrons.
His experience meant when we were up for live missile exercises, we didn't just get a close pass which counts for a kill, his ability to tweak the system to perfection scored us a direct hit on the drone every time.
No way would our CO or XO want anything to happen to a tech with those skills.

This may be a view you hadn't considered. There were tales I'd heard of guys geting tossed overboard just for being gay, but over time they were revealed to be just tales. If they were good enough at their jobs to be of great value, nobody would ever consider such a thing.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112072/board/thread/153288693<Best Xmas Present EVER

So has everything else