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Coming out in the line of fire: "don't ask, don't tell" presumes that battle units would collapse if gay soldiers were allowed to come out. Maybe someone should tell the Pentagon—they're already out, and it's only made their units stronger
Advocate, The, July 3, 2007 by Marc Haeringer
IN MANY WAYS ARMY PRIVATE KARISSA URMANITA is a typical U.S. soldier. The Pomona, Calif., native joined the Army to take advantage of its generous college tuition assistance program and to help support her family. She's close with her colleagues (calling them her "battle buddies"), and in her downtime from stocking the combat support hospital at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, she likes to play cards and talk. But Urmanita, now 20, is an atypical soldier in at least one respect--she's an out lesbian.
In direct violation of "don't ask, don't tell," Urmanita was deployed to Iraq in March--two weeks after she came out to her command. And challenging the belief that open homosexuality would undermine unit cohesion and morale in combat, Urmanita says being out has had no negative impact.
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"My command seems to act as if I never came out to them," Urmanita writes in an e-mail from Iraq. "Work is still the same, and off time didn't change.
"I'm open about talking to my girlfriend over the phone," she continues. "I know other lesbians, and I've been seen hanging out with them. I'm just in a more comfortable environment because [my colleagues] know it's hard for me to be honest and open to the whole Army."
It's not just hard; it's forbidden. If the whole Army--or, particularly, the Pentagon--were to find out how open Urmanita is about her sexuality, she would be sent back to the United States immediately, like the more than 2,500 gay and lesbian soldiers who've been dismissed since the war began in 2003. In May three linguists specializing in Arabic dialects were discharged under "don't ask, don't tell," bringing the total number of expelled specialists in that key language to 58 and prompting calls in Congress for an explanation.
Fourteen years ago, in debate leading up to the passage of "don't ask, don't tell," congressional witnesses testified that "the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." Since then the American public's negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians have softened in many respects, but the Pentagon and a diminishing breed of politicians refuse to evolve.
Case in point: In April, U.S. senator from Arizona and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain reinforced the military status quo, saying, "Open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion, and discipline."
The Advocate spoke to some openly gay U.S. servicemen and women on active duty, only to find that the "intolerable risk" of their being out actually posed no risk at all.
This spring, Navy petty officer second class Jason Knight, then serving his second Middle East tour in Kuwait, was told he would be discharged after he spoke openly about his sexuality in the military paper Stars and Stripes.
It was a bold move and not his first. Knight had previously come out to his command in 2005, just before the end of his first tour of duty, during which he served in Iraq as a linguist specializing in Hebrew. In response to his admission, he was told that, per "don't ask, don't tell" policy, discharge orders would be prepared, but--somewhat mysteriously--the paperwork failed to reach Knight's file, allowing him to complete his tour and remain in the inactive reserve. A year after he returned home the Navy recalled him for a one-year deployment, and Knight reported for duty--with no plans to return to the closet.
"I wasn't going to go back to that life," says Knight, now 24, via telephone from his home in San Diego. "My coworkers and direct chain of command were all aware of my sexuality, and it really didn't bother them."
It clearly bothered higher-ups, though. Within days of the Stars and Stripes article Knight was told he would be discharged--again--under "don't ask, don't tell," and the article was cited as one of the reasons. Knight's decision to go public was motivated by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace's statement in March that homosexuality is "immoral," and his valor cost him his job.
"I don't have any regrets," says Knight, who officially received his "don't ask, don't tell" discharge in late May, just before his latest military commitment was due to end. He has since joined the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's national speakers' bureau and has met with congressional staffers. "This is a good opportunity for me to help lift the ban."
As soldiers like Urmanita and Knight are finding out, being gay in the service is often OK--as long as the Pentagon brass don't know. While simply being out is grounds for dismissal under "don't ask, don't tell," and certainly not all commands are accepting of gays and lesbians, in many cases the ban against openly gay service members is not being enforced. Dismissals under "don't ask, don't tell" have dropped significantly since peaking in 2001, with 2006 discharges just barely topping half the number handed down in '01.
