When you really need soldiers, you lower the standards.

Right now it's actively difficult to get into the military because we don't need that many soldiers, and for the most part the US government can take their pick of what types of skills they want in their recruits.

It's shocking to me that homosexuality stood in the way of conscription in the 1960s, but then again I grew up entirely in a time after Stonewall and firmly in the era of more rights for LGBT people.