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WASHINGTON – It’s been two years since the military allowed gay troops to serve openly. But for some whose careers were hurt under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or the earlier prohibition against homosexuality, the past scars run deep.
Marine Monique Williams, who joined the Marines in 2004 and now serves as a recruiter in Brooklyn, remembers that DADT caused its own difficulties.
“It kind of put everybody into hiding, for lack of a better word. So we did kind of sweep it under the rug and say, ‘Hey, listen. We just can’t, we can’t be out there. We can’t be comfortable with what we’re doing because now they’re actually looking for it,” Williams said.
Williams said she wound up deleting personal websites and breaking up with a girlfriend.
“Just to kind of keep everybody out of my business,” Williams said. “And a lot of other Marines did that, too.”
Ellen Bushmiller served in the Navy from 1981 to 1983, but was discharged when it was discovered that she was a lesbian, more than a decade before DADT became policy.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was sort of in place anyway in a really informal way. As long as nobody said anything you were mostly ignored as long as you did your job,” Bushmiller, a former Navy sailor, said.
She was told to leave after a female service member outed her and a few other lesbians. Her discharge was not honorable.
“It was a cultural knowledge that being in the military meant you couldn’t be gay,” she said.
While Bushmiller did not have the DADT policy to protect her, Michael Almy said it didn’t help him when he was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 2006 after serving for 13 years. His last position was as a major.
“I still maintain to this day that the Air Force overstepped their boundaries and that they really abused this law (DADT policy) and bent it to their own purposes to use whatever way they could – or whatever way they saw fit – to throw gays out of the military,” Almy said.
Almy claimed that the Air Force violated DADT by searching through his personal e-mails to uncover the fact that he is gay.
The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
Trial by fire
“At first you feel betrayed and you are betrayed and you feel it. Keenly. And then as you grow past it you try to look at why they did what they did. And I know now for a lot of different reasons that people do things out of motivation that they sometimes don’t understand,” Bushmiller said.
While Bushmiller feels some resentment towards the woman who turned in her and the others, she has tried to come to terms with it.
“So I can only hope that she didn’t understand what she was doing. Because it wasn’t just me who was kicked out, it was other people. I was young and some of those other people weren’t,” Bushmiller said. While Bushmiller didn’t have the partial protection provided by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Almy said DADT did little to ease life for gays in the military.
“A lot of people have the misnomer that DADT was there to protect gays and help them serve in the military when in reality it was the complete opposite,” Almy said. “It almost gave the military cart blanche to do whatever they wanted to throw gays out. And really they should have just named it ‘Don’t Be Gay’ because that’s in essence what it was.”
Almy was involved in the repeal process, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“Early 2010 was the first big event that started the whole repeal process. And that was when Secretary of Defense (Robert) Gates and Adm. (Michael) Mullen testified before the Senate Armed Services committee and that was February 2010. And that was when they both pushed-or encouraged the Senate – that they supported the repeal, which was obviously huge,” Almy said.
Featuring Lady Gaga, a rally was organized in Maine in September 2010 to encourage the state’s two senators – Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — to support the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
“And it worked. They both eventually supported repeal,” Almy said.
Almy also did many media interviews. He was also involved with SLDN, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, now also known as Outserve.
“I think it helped give a face to an abstract issue, it gave real-life stories of myself and several other veterans who were serving, serving their country honorably, doing their jobs, and they just got caught up in a really horrible law,” Almy said.
Williams also has gotten involved with Outserve, and is the chapter leader of the New York, New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania area.
Her new goal is to get the military to allow transgender individuals to serve.
“The transgender issue is going to be a tough one to fight for obvious reasons, the sexuality, gender change, it’s going to require medication. Obviously if you’re against LGB you’re going to be more against transgender because you’re trying to change your sex,” Williams said.
Looking forward
What do these three have to say to those LGBT service members today?
“I’d say be yourself, figure out what that means. They obviously no longer have to worry about being thrown out so that’s just automatically a huge relief and I would say try to keep some perspective on what that means as far as how far we’ve come and where we have to go, but enjoy it. And set a great example,” Almy said.
Bushmiller said, “You should be measured by your work so work well. ”
Williams said changing attitudes towards gays and lesbians will take time, but at least now the military policy isn’t fostering silence.
“At the end of the day discrimination is not tolerated,” she said.
