Tell: An Intimate History of Gay Men the Milary | GQ

Contents:

• BRIEF HISTORY OF GAYS THE MILARY
• TELL: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF GAY MEN THE MILARY
• THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY
• GAY RIGHTS
• "COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS
• UPDATED: HISTORY OF U.S. POLICY AND LAW ON GAYS THE MILARY
• I'M A GAY ARMY OFFICER—QUEER TROOPS MT FIGHT BACK
• HISTORY OF GAYS THE MILARY--PICTURES
• PRIMARY SOURCE SET: GAY MEN THE ARY
• GAYS THE MILARY
• GAY SERGEANT CHALLENG THE AIR FORCE

BRIEF HISTORY OF GAYS THE MILARY

" Though a June 2009 Gallup poll showed that 69% of Amerins support allowg gays and lbians to serve the ary, repealg "Don't ask, don't tell" will take more than a claratn — will take an act of Congrs. "I remember beg the Castro, " says John Forrett (army rerve, 1987–99), "and watchg the TV at a bar wh some iends, watchg Al Gore and Bill Clton swearg that if they beme the tag team for Ameri they were gog to get rid of the harassment of gays and lbians servg the ary.

TELL: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF GAY MEN THE MILARY

" Gay people were allowed the ary but only as long as they didn’t reveal their sexualy; to facilate this, all members of the ary were also prohibed om quirg about anyone’s possible orientatn. And therefore few people realized that the first Amerin serly wound the vasn of Iraq durg the send Gulf war was a gay Alva signed up, before "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, " he had to lie on his paperwork.

THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY

And when, 2006, the battl over "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" the ary and gay marriage the wir muny were simmerg, Alva’s boyiend at the time poted out to him that he did have some notoriety that might be of e. (The meetgs have been arranged through a private onle work lled OutServe, set up only last year, which allows gay and lbian servicepeople a safe and secure way of fdg and munitg wh one another.

GAY RIGHTS

In the shadow of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, " whenever gay servicemen did face any kd of homophobic harassment, they were powerls to draw attentn to whout potentially triggerg the end of their ary reer.

Of a number of latg events—Rocha was also force-fed dog food and locked to a sh-filled dog kennel—the most abive and explicly homophobic was when he was orred by his manr to act a dog-trag scenar, repeated over and over so that every dog the un uld be n through .

Anyone who gets off thkg that ’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ unr the Bh admistratn anyone uld have gone and said, ’Hey, I’m beg antagonized unr the prciple that I might be gay’ and feel safe is absurd. Life Seventy Years Ago as a Gay Serviceman: World War IIIt was only really around the Send World War that ary discrimatn beme dified and anized, and that the foc moved om simply sanctns agast homosexual acts to an attempt to intify and weed out homosexual tennci—though, as would be seen aga and aga, when fightg bodi were need badly enough, such ncerns would often evaporate.

"COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS

"JM: "I found out right after the war that if someone were discharged as homosexual, a notice of that fact was sent home to their lol draft board, so that their whole muny would e to know that they were gay. And this led directly to the formatn of gay ghettos the major ci, where people who uldn’t go home, bee their sexualy had been revealed by the army, had to move to Greenwich Village or the San Francis Castro. Manzella operated fully wh the vtigatn; when he was asked for evince that he wasn’t jt claimg to be gay orr to trigger a discharge, he even supplied photos, and footage of him and his boyiend passnately kissg on a road trip.

"While he was ployed, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a mpaigng group who had been givg him guidance, told him that 60 Mut wanted to do a piece about an openly gay man servg a bat zone, persuadg him that would give a voice to the "65, 000 men and women the ary" who weren’t able to live as openly as he was.

I was nfed until beme clear that, partly by chance and partly by a cha of personal remendatns over the years, this trailer park had bee some kd of gay-veteran hot spot: There are eight or ten others livg here, and more nearby. ’ The CO looked at my iend and said, ’If somebody wants to get off my ship for beg gay, they have to e to me wh two Polaroids, both of them they have to be clearly suckg ck, and I want to be able to see their face.

UPDATED: HISTORY OF U.S. POLICY AND LAW ON GAYS THE MILARY

One Man’s Secret Too ManyIt’s temptg to see gay servicemen’s entire ary existence through the prism of this sgle issue—the mpaigner, the opprsed, the stoic endurer—and as the totaly of who they are.

I'M A GAY ARMY OFFICER—QUEER TROOPS MT FIGHT BACK

In June 1998, Richard Merrt (Mar, 1985–98) appeared on the ver of The New York Tim Magaze, uniform but wh his face obscured, and si the story scribed what life was actually like for someone gay servg the ary. ’" The way he sometim jtified to himself what he did was that was a rponse to the ary’s homophobia, albe an extreme one: "I would feel very angry at the policy, and beme ’Well, fuck you, Mare Corps—I’m gog to do this and be as gay as I want to be for the world to see.

HISTORY OF GAYS THE MILARY--PICTURES

"Navy #3: "Nobody joed up to be ’the un gay guy, ’ but that’s who you’re gog to be, and I thk ’s cumbent on who are senr to basilly intify ourselv so that younger kids n look and say, ’Hey, is okay. Some likely post-repeal plitns: ristant pockets of homophobia the ary; the ntued right to voice certa homophobic sentiments unr, for stance, the eedom of relig exprsn; possible aternizatn charg if gay servicemen of different ranks ntue to associate wh each other as they often did the silent years; growg disquiet at the absence of partner rights equivalent to those for servicemen’s wiv. 1988: The rults of a jot report nducted by the DoD and the Defense Personnel Secury Rearch Edutn Center rerce the fdgs of a 1957 report claimg that gay and lbian dividuals enlisted the armed forc pose no signifint risk to secury (which had prevly been the ratnale for barrg gay dividuals om enlistg the ary).

PRIMARY SOURCE SET: GAY MEN THE ARY

“Unsirable” behavr—specifilly, an accatn of “attemptg to perpetrate an act of Homosexualy, ” as he explaed a letter to the Natnal Associatn for the Advancement of Colored People, om whom he was seekg legal help. ” Wh WWII’s massive human mobilizatn, the ary shifted om s practice of jailg soldiers acced of homosexualy (which required time-nsumg, expensive urt-martials) to simply emg them psychologilly unf.

READ MORE: The Supreme Court Rulgs That Have Shaped Gay Rights Ameri‘Scientific’ Attempts to Intify HomosexualsIn their effort to screen out queer nscripts, ary officials ran to a problem: They didn’t have a nclive way of intifyg them, beyond a set of subjectively terpreted “signs” such as “feme bodily characteristics” and “effemacy drs and manner, ” acrdg to Allan Bébé, thor of Comg Out Unr Fire: Gay Men and Women Durg World War II. The doctor proclaimed that a tongue prsor tt uld screen out gay people not jt om ary service, but om other feral agenci as doctors began explorg whether they uld diagnose homosexualy—through Rorschach tts or by measurg sexualy through hormone tts. ” That gave officials license to eject someone for homosexualy unr the blue discharge system simply bee they seemed gay—even if the ary lacked MORE: How LGBT Civil Servants Beme Public Enemy No.

Army service World War I, Gerber was spired to create his anizatn by the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, a “homosexual emancipatn” group ’s small group published a few issu of s newsletter “Friendship and Freedom, ” the untry’s first gay-tert newsletter. Ernment signated Gerber’s Chigo hoe a Natnal Historic Pk TriangleCorbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, gay rights movement stagnated for the next few s, though LGBT dividuals around the world did e to the spotlight a few example, English poet and thor Radclyffe Hall stirred up ntroversy 1928 when she published her lbian-themed novel, The Well of Lonels.

GAYS THE MILARY

Addnally, 1948, his book Sexual Behavr the Human Male, Aled Ksey proposed that male sexual orientatn li on a ntuum between exclively homosexual to exclively Homophile Years In 1950, Harry Hay found the Mattache Foundatn, one of the natn’s first gay rights group.

”Though started off small, the foundatn, which sought to improve the liv of gay men through discsn groups and related activi, expand after foundg member Dale Jenngs was arrted 1952 for solicatn and then later set ee due to a adlocked the end of the year, Jenngs formed another anizatn lled One, Inc., which weled women and published ONE, the untry’s first pro-gay magaze. Post Office, which 1954 clared the magaze “obscene” and refed to liver Mattache Society Mattache Foundatn members rtctured the anizatn to form the Mattache Society, which had lol chapters other parts of the untry and 1955 began publishg the untry’s send gay publitn, The Mattache Review.

GAY SERGEANT CHALLENG THE AIR FORCE

That same year, four lbian upl San Francis found an anizatn lled the Dghters of Bilis, which soon began publishg a newsletter lled The Ladr, the first lbian publitn of any early years of the movement also faced some notable setbacks: the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn listed homosexualy as a form of mental disorr followg year, Print Dwight D. In 1961, Illois beme the first state to do away wh s anti-sodomy laws, effectively crimalizg homosexualy, and a lol TV statn California aired the first documentary about homosexualy, lled The 1965, Dr.