Was Mitch McConnell really court-martialed for sodomy in 1967?

I hadn’t heard it. I did a search & found a bunch of reports saying it was true; however, NONE of those reports were from reliable sources unless you consider the Huffington Post to be reliable rather than biased!!! As much as I’d like to think that it’s true, I couldn’t find anything that seemed to back it up with legitimate facts that I could feel comfortable repeating!!!

McConnell served for 37 days before being honorably discharged (medical separation). If he had managed to get himself court-martialed in that brief time, it is unlikely that he would have gotten an honorable discharge. Anything’s possible, of course, but nothing in the linked “source” is very convincing. In fact, a big part of the conspiracy theory seems to rest on a misunderstanding of both McConnell’s condition and how medical discharges work.

He was discharged because they discovered an eye problem.

Dems have tried to cast aspersions for years. He has revealed portions of his service record.

But the “eye problem” was easily treated with steroids, from what I understand.

@Dutchess_lll That is not actually correct. Optic neuritis is not “easily cured by steroids” (the phrase used in your source), it is commonly treated with steroids. Those are importantly different. If McConnell could have just gotten an injection and been good to go, he presumably wouldn’t have been discharged. But that’s not how it works. The treatment takes time (anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks), and the vast majority of cases still result in some amount of permanent damage. It’s not in anybody’s interest to put a soldier on the battlefield if they have a medical condition that could make them to be a liability, so it’s not terribly surprising that someone would be discharged for having optic neuritis.

Another clue that this claim is overblown: a court-martial typically takes around six month to a year for the whole process to play out. There’s no way that it could have happened to McConnell in 37 days. The most plausible version of the story is that McConnell was arrested for something that could have gotten him court-martialed (e.g., sodomy), but he was discharged under false pretenses instead thanks to a favor from Senator John Sherman Cooper. The problem with this is that all of the documentary evidence suggests not only that Cooper genuinely believed the medical excuse, but that all he did was accelerate a discharge that was already underway. Again, anything’s possible. But that doesn’t mean we should believe it—especially in the absence of anything resembling real evidence.