Two members of the United States armed services are relieved that they can now be themselves in the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) by the Obama administration, after having lived a lie for years while serving in active duty.
Speaking this week at the Pentagon to a group of international journalists on a reporting tour of the US hosted by the Foreign Press Centers of the Department of State, a female senior officer, who is also lesbian, said that on a day-to-day basis, one’s sexuality never was an issue. Because of the sensitive nature of the issue and the fact that she was still not comfortable with everyone knowing that they are gay, she and the male officer asked not to be named in the article. The woman served in the Navy for 22 years, while the man served the army for 20 years and both struggled with their secret lives during DADT.
This policy was put in place in 1993 by the Clinton administration and was repealed in September 2011.
In a flood of emotions, the female officer said it was amazing to be sitting speaking to journalists knowing that DADT had been repealed and she and others would not have to fear for their jobs.
The male officer, who worked with the female earlier in his military career, said they had developed a bond with the soldiers the two of them supervised together in the combat zone and were able to speak about the issue. Both of them served in Afghanistan.
He is happy that DADT has been revoked since it means he can be truthful about who he is. “If someone now asks me how my family is I don’t have to say that I don’t have a family,” the man said.
The woman for her part said that at the commencement of DADT in the early 1990s she was in a same sex relationship that went sour. She said she was threatened by her then partner with being outed and this would have meant the end of her military career.
“Being thrown out of the military was not a part of my plan,” the woman said, having a strong family background in the military. She said she has not shared things with her family because she never wanted to put them in a position to have to lie. “There were plenty of us who thought this day would never come,” she said.
The male officer told reporters that there was a time then he would cringe every time his phone rang. “I thought that I was going to be fired [for being gay],” he said. But he said he now feels like a full-fledged member of the society. “I have never been more proud of being in the military,” he said, reacting to the repeal of DADT.
He noted that since the repeal of DADT, several persons who had been discharged for being gay had returned to the military. However, he said, some of those persons who would have been discharged during the years of DADT would have run afoul of the law making themselves ineligible for reenlisting with the US armed forces.
The Navy officer said, “We do not have a perfect military but what I have seen since repeal of DADT [is amazing],” she said. “The hardest part was not feeling like I can be truthful to give assistance to people [in the same situation],” she said.
For his part, the Army officer said that not telling the whole truth “eats at your soul.”
He said he was tired of lying by omission and being very guarded when speaking so as not to reveal the wrong pronoun when speaking of his personal life and his relationship.
