"Don't ask, don't tell" puts lives at risk
Published: 05/25/2010 by By Rob Smith
For a gay soldier like me, the military's policy undermined the one thing every combat unit requires: Trust
I am a gay veteran, but my experience with "don't ask, don't tell" is probably different from most you've heard, because I never told. For nearly five years I stayed silent about my sexual orientation while I served as an infantryman in the United States Army, successfully completed my deployments to Kuwait and Iraq and got a Combat Infantryman Badge to boot, then was honorably discharged from the military and went on to graduate from Syracuse University using my Montgomery GI Bill Benefits. I should be the perfect example of DADT's success. But my time in the military was one of the most stressful, unnerving periods of my life. You see, when I served for those five years, I did so in complete silence and isolation.
For a kid like me -- the first in my family to go to college, growing up in a small city in Ohio -- the military was the way to go. My family was solidly working-class, unable to afford to put me through college, and I had the misfortune of going to a high school that rendered an introverted, intelligent kid like me virtually invisible amid the throngs of skilled basketball and football players that took my school to sports glory while its academic reputation lagged further behind.
I wanted to get out of my city, to create a different life for myself, and serving in the military was the only real shot I had. I would have done anything to protect that opportunity. I was pathologically paranoid of opening up to anyone about anything, least of all the gay identity that I was struggling to come to terms with.
For years I cut myself off from my other platoon members, becoming secretive and antisocial. I was told these were my brothers, that I should be able to trust them with my life. That's what warfare demands -- total faith in those fighting alongside you -- but my fear eroded that trust. How could I completely trust a soldier who could ruin my career? So I declined invitations to hang out. I kept my distance. I was so nervous that they would somehow know, that I would say the wrong thing, maybe look at another guy for too long, and that they would figure it out, report me, and have me railroaded out of the military and right back to Ohio. I retreated into myself and, eventually, sunk into a depression.
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