1. 28 retired flags is a drop in the bucket. I’d wager its about 1% of all those retired.
2. About 1/3 of these appear to be medical officers—not combat rated.
3. About 1/2 of these are Brigadier Generals. While that sounds impressive, BGs are often bitter ‘cause they never got that 2nd star. In some ways, that looks worse than a Colonel who never got selected for BG.
4. I don’t see any 4-stars on that list.
How does that matter and why?
Medical officers are more knowledgeable of the medical consequences not only for the gays but for the heterosexual soldier as well.
Gays live a life that puts them in very close physical contact with a very large number of other gays who are often sick with highly communicable diseases that non-gay soldiers can a DO get: tuberculosis, body lice, staff and strep skin infections, flu, pneumonia, meningitis, are merely a few of likely several hundred examples.
To make matters worse, once a gay becomes HIV positive ( which might not be known for quite a long time) his immune system gradually deteriorates. This makes him even more likely to contract one of the above diseases and then carry it back to infect the heterosexual soldiers in his unit.
Remember: HIV people living a highly active homosexual live style are walking petri dishes of diseases that the rest of us can and DO get!