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By Burt Constable

You are a soldier stationed outside Baghdad, and a crazed Iraqi teenage boy is running your way, carrying a bundle and screaming something in his native tongue.

"Blessed liberators, help me please!" he might be pleading. "My baby sister has a fever!"

Or maybe he is shrieking, "Virgins in heaven, await my arrival! Allah be with me and my bomb as I give my life to blow up these infidels!"

Let a suicidal teen get too close, and you and your buddies are dead. Shoot an unarmed teen and his baby sister, and you and your buddies might find yourself in the middle of an angry mob that might kill you as well.

What you need is a soldier who could translate the teen's ramblings for you. But if that highly trained linguistics expert happens to be gay, well, then our government thinks you are better off on your own.

"When I hear today that they are kicking out Arabic linguists, I find that unbelievable," says Jim Darby, founder of the local chapter of the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Veterans of America, which now is known as American Veterans for Equal Rights. "I wonder how many lives they could have saved on both sides (if those gay translators hadn't been booted)."

That statistic isn't available. But the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California at Santa Barbara did find that our government has booted 88 qualified language specialists, many of them Arabic-language translators and interrogators, simply because they happened to be gay.

We've also used the gay ban to can 49 nuclear, biological and chemical warfare experts; 3 helicopter pilots; 52 missile guidance and control operators; 150 artillery specialists; 268 intelligence personnel; 57 combat engineers; 331 who work in the medical field; and seven musicians, according to government records obtained by the center.

The 5,674 reservists recently forced back into duty will replace some of the 6,273 competent gay military personnel discharged since 1998. To fill shortages, some reservists were asked Wednesday to stay beyond their two-year limit.

Is our nation's institutionalized rejection of gays so great that we refuse to let them die defending our rights?

In theory, yes.

"There's the policy, and then there's the implementation," says Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow for the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military. "Gay discharges have always gone down during war."

When the going gets tough, it seems the Marines get a little more gay. Homosexual fighting men and women who would be discharged during peacetime often are kept on during war, Frank says.

This flies in the face of any argument that gays ruin morale and cause problems.

"Why would commanders look the other way when it matters more?" Frank asks. A well-trained soldier is a well-trained soldier.

"Commanders know they want gays as much as anyone else," Frank says.

George W. Bush, like Bill Clinton before him, embraces the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that tolerates gays as long as they stay secret. John Kerry, as Clinton did during his first campaign, promises to lift the military's gay ban.

Two dozen nations have lifted bans against gay soldiers, Frank notes. Britain has homosexuals on the front lines. So does Israel, Canada and Australia. Our U.S. soldiers served alongside those gay troops without a problem.

"Fewer and fewer experts defend this ban," Frank says.

The ban must go, says Darby, a Navy linguistic specialist who served on ships in the Mediterranean monitoring Russian communications during the Korean War. His organization of 50 local members hosts many events, including next month's picnic in Busse Woods in Elk Grove Village.

During a recent "Salute to America's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Veterans" at Daley Plaza in Chicago, former Sgt. Miriam Ben-Shalom summed up the feeling.

"Our service was not motivated by gain, not motivated by thoughts of profit," Ben-Shalom said. "We serve simply because we love the United States of America."