By the end of WWII, the military apparatus had enlisted more than 16 million U.S. citizens and residents, and if Alfred Kinsey’s wartime surveys were correct, as many as 0.6 to 1.6 million of those soldiers were gay or bisexual. Indeed, the military discharged thousands of veterans as ‘undesirable’, with disproportionate numbers for homosexuality.

As such, undesirable discharges haunted many of these unfortunate men and women, making it difficult or impossible for them to find work as civilians.

According to Berube, a particularly crippling policy enacted by the Veterans Association against undesirable discharges was the decision in 1945 to single them out for ineligibility for the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the "G.I. Bill" benefits, blocking them from the generous suite of benefits approved by Congress in 1944 for returning veterans. The bill gave veterans access to "subsidized home loans; college loans and allowances for expenses like tuition, housing, and books; farm and business loans; unemployment allowances; and job training and placement programs; burial allowances; subsidized life insurance; disability pensions and insurance; hospital care," and many other valuable benefits that helped to transform America after the war.

Indeed, millions of American veterans attended college on the G.I. Bill, more than ever before in the nation’s history, thereafter joining the workforce as professionals; architects, doctors, teachers, etcetera. Many became homeowners, raised families, and created a supposedly utopian suburban oasis of the United States in the 1950s. But this utopia was only accessible to some; the military’s discriminatory and punitive policies ensured that in many cases "blue discharge" veterans were not only unable to find and keep jobs, but were also blocked from health care, education, housing, and insurance, creating personal and financial crises, thus destroying the lives of thousands of gay men and lesbians.

But the hardships they were forced to endure also had the effect of creating the perception of gays as a minority group. For the first time they began to see themselves as a discrete group under siege by cruel and unjust government policies intent upon revoking their hard-won rights and benefits as Americans who had sacrificed their lives for their country.

Those who fought to upgrade their undesirable discharges for homosexuality began to define their struggle with the government as one for justice and equal rights, ideas that became part of the foundations of the movement.

These individual battles were precursors to, and informed, the early equality movement for gay people as it coalesced in the 1950s, as gay men and lesbians began to fight for their civil rights.