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5 September 2009 By Dahr Jamail Homophobia
arguably manifests itself in the worst form of
discrimination in the military, surpassing even
racism. Instead of enabling recruits to vanquish their
prejudices and strengthening the individual and the
collective spirit, all military training seems to be
geared toward invoking the darkest elements in human
nature - fear, hatred, pettiness, insecurity and
similar aberrations. Under normal conditions, such an
orientation legitimizes unacceptable behavior; under
harsh and hostile conditions, it makes beasts of men.
It is immaterial whether one is at the perpetrating
end or the receiving end of unjust behavior. Of
greater significance is the general air of violence
and inequality that gets normalized in the process.
As the occupation of Afghanistan increasingly leads
the military to search for more boots on the ground,
homosexual soldiers who are beginning to resist the
treatment they are receiving in the military are
slowly becoming yet another hurdle the overstretched
military faces.
As the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy
instituted under President Bill Clinton continues,
more soldiers are beginning to resist this repressive
and discriminatory practice. Many, like New York Army
National Guard member Jennifer Hogg, have found it a
reason to begin questioning their involvement in the
military.
“Being a lesbian on 9/11 is what initially led me
to begin to question my involvement in the military
and the military’s involvement in the world,” Hogg
explained to Truthout, “If on 9/11, I did not have the
freedom to hug my girlfriend goodbye before we left as
a unit for NYC, then what freedom was I protecting?
What freedom could we offer to the world if we treat
it so restrictively based on who a person falls in
love with?”
It is a question that, with suitable modifications,
is perhaps pertinent for each one of us to ask, even
outside the military. We who never tire of vaunting
the freedoms that America allows its citizens, and
feels authorized to export elsewhere at all costs.
Hogg confronted homophobia at all levels in the
military. “During advanced individual training, after
the conclusion of Bush versus Gore [election], a male
E7 [higher ranking] teacher, during his introduction
of the class for that day, stated that he was glad
that Bush was going to be president because now we
won’t have all these fags in the army.”
She chose not to report the incident for fear of
being singled out and picked on. “I felt as though
physically I would easily fit the stereotype of a
lesbian … not to mention that I was in a service
position that was heavily male. I did not feel that
even the full provision of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,
Don’t Harass, Don’t Pursue would suffice to protect
me. I heard the word ‘fag’ used on a daily basis by
other soldiers in uniform. If the military does not
stop or intervene in casual usage of a word as
hate-filled as ‘fag,’ how could I expect them to take
my accusation seriously or treat it as a violation?
Besides, what I saw the military do to address DADT
was a joke.”
Hogg explained, “In my unit, all briefings relating
to sexism were treated as a joke and were never
attended in full strength by the unit. Most people
found ways to avoid briefings in general, or have a
friend sign them in. Briefings on sexual orientation
and DADT invariably had leaders who were embarrassed
to give them, so it was never done in an effective or
serious manner. Most had low attendance and the
information offered was incomplete.”
Like most homosexuals in the military, Hogg felt
compelled to conceal her sexuality both in and out of
uniform, so as not to face discrimination, or worse,
though DADT officially only applies to soldiers while
in uniform. “While it was not made into an issue for
me while [I was] in uniform, I still felt heavily
pressured to conceal my sexuality as a civilian for
fear of being outed. So even if I served one weekend a
month and two weeks in the summer, I was actively
under DADT every single day of my contract. This
caused considerable stress on my relationship and
personal outlook.”
The fact that Hogg felt the need to conceal her
sexual orientation at all times speaks to the
dysfunction of the policy and the widespread
homophobia in the military.
Martin Smith, a retired Marine Corps sergeant who
served from 1997 to 2002 as a Russian cryptologic
linguist, also struggled with having to hide his
homosexuality during his stint in the military. In an
article for the International Socialist Review, he
wrote:
I remember my first visit to the chow hall in
which three Drill Instructors (DIs), wearing their
signature “smoky bear” covers, pounced upon me for
having looked at them, screaming that I was a “nasty
piece of civilian shit.” From then on, I learned
that you could only look at a DI when instructed to
by the command of “Eyeballs!”
In addition, recruits could only speak in the
third person, thus ridding our vocabulary of the
term “I” and divorcing ourselves from our previous
civilian identities.
Our emerging group mentality was built upon and
reinforced by tearing down and degrading us through
a series of regimented and ritualistic exercises in
the first phase of boot camp. Despite having an
African-American and a Latino DI, recruits in my
platoon were ridiculed with derogatory language that
included racial epithets. But recruits of color were
not the only victims, we were all “fags,” “pussies,”
and “shitbags.” We survived through a twisted sort
of leveling based on what military historian
Christian G. Appy calls “a solidarity of the
despised.”
Smith describes in the same article how the process
of dehumanization of marines occurs concurrently with
the dehumanization of the “enemy.” The aim is
ostensibly to train them to overcome all fear or
qualms against killing: “Given the fact that marines
are molded to kill the enemy ‘other’ from TD (training
day) One, combined with the bestial nature of colonial
war, it should come as no surprise that rather than
turning ‘degenerates’ into paragons of virtue, the
Corps is more likely capable of transforming men into
monsters.”
Smith told Truthout he was aware of DADT before he
joined the forces, but, for him, “part of joining was
about trying to find myself. From my own internalized
homophobia came the thought that I still needed to
prove myself as a man.”
As with so many other recruits, in addition there
was the economic factor, since Smith was in dire need
of an income.
In boot camp, another recruit accused Smith of
being gay. “It became a rumor and the drill
instructors picked up on it, and I was ostracized from
the beginning. There is a tendency to identify a
handful to pick on and use that to build solidarity
with the other guys.”
After transferring to Monterey, California, to
study as a linguist, Smith hid his sexual orientation
because “on base, being gay, you are vilified. But in
the civilian world you’re sort of a rock star because
you are gay and in the Marines. It’s schizophrenic …
so that was difficult. I would find other gay friends,
marines, and we kept it secret because people would be
suspicious of us just for being friends. So we would
meet fifty yards from the barracks and sneak off base
just to hang out as friends.”
A hate crime in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998,
heightened Smith’s survival instinct, forcing him to
further hide his homosexuality.
After Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming
student, was brutally murdered, Smith found the NCOs
starting class with vile jokes about gays and
unabashedly declaring, “That fag deserved to die.” It
bothered him that no one protested.
After a transfer to Hawaii, Smith found a simpler
method of disguising his orientation. “I had a
boyfriend in town, and his brother’s wife pretended to
be my girlfriend, and we went to the Marine Corps ball
together. She was a really attractive Asian woman, and
it drew attention … People would ask us questions, and
we improvised elaborate stories about what we were
doing. My story was that I had this girlfriend out of
town … when in reality I lived off base and was
regularly seeing my boyfriend about a half-hour away.”
While on base, Smith still found it necessary to
maintain a facade of being “normal” by doing things
like leaving copies of Hustler magazine lying around.
“I would tell people I was going to stripper clubs
on the weekends … constant lies. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
forces you to lie. It’s not just about being gay, but
who you are spending time with, who your friends are.
Your whole existence becomes a lie. I turned to drugs,
any kind of escapism. I made it a point to get out of
my mind, which was the only relief I could get. That’s
the kind of toll it took on me.”
While there are no hard numbers on the number of
gays in the military, Smith believes that it is not
dissimilar to that in the civilian population.
“However, the difference is likely in who is ‘out.’ I
think that far fewer people in the Army are out to
themselves and/or friends because of the extreme
homophobic, masculine environment, and the obvious
fear of losing your job and benefits.”
Smith, who was honorably discharged on January 5,
2002, had numerous stories to tell about other gays in
the military he saw gay-bashed and discriminated
against. He found it necessary to keep his orientation
hidden for fear of negative consequences such as
physical assault, loss of job, and discrimination.
Jeff Key, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps
Reserve, was deployed to Iraq in 2003. After coming
out on CNN during an interview in March 2004, he was
finally discharged two years later in April 2006. When
he spoke with Truthout about his experience, he had
much to share from his experience as a gay man in the
Marines.
Five years after his return from Iraq, Key admitted
that on some levels his joining the military was an
attempt to “sort of heal my internalized homophobia
and to hopefully be accepted by my culture, because I
never felt accepted by my culture and that was very
much tied into the gender paradigm and homophobia. And
so I thought to become that thing which is the
paradigm of American masculinity: a United States
Marine.”
Key had expected and been prepared for abuse, but
unlike most gays in the military, he did not
experience any overt discrimination.
“I was pleasantly surprised that on the inside
there wasn’t very much homophobia. There’s a lot of
sort of homoerotic joking, which is kind of peculiar.
Historically, since man has waged battle, there has
been this homoerotic component to the whole military
thing. But there’s more joking around it than anything
else, and that isn’t necessarily malicious.”
Nevertheless, he did feel constrained to keep his
sexuality a secret, at least for a time. He decided to
come out when he felt it was a lie to pretend to his
fellow marines to be something he wasn’t.
“I have to say that I never had a negative
coming-out experience when I decided to do so. I did
not broadcast my homosexuality because, actually from
a selfish point of view, I did not want it to harm my
military career and I wouldn’t have been put in a
position of leadership - like I was - had the chain of
command known … [and] if I had been more forthcoming
about my sexuality.”
Key contextualizes his vehement opposition to the
US occupation of Iraq. In the beginning, he believed,
“I brought to my country and to the Marine Corps what
was, to me, a very noble, kind of sacred commitment.
And it was based on a contract. And the written
contract that I signed, which includes my willingness
to give my life for our constitution, this country,
and its people; to always follow lawful orders; and to
never follow unlawful orders. And the stated part of
the contract is that I’ll be willing to give my life
for you, I will dedicate myself as a marine to
standing up for the principles of the country, and the
unspoken part is that you will never use my blood for
money.”
For him the contract ended when “invasion and
colonization, blackout prisons, and torture [began to]
get portrayed and received as not only patriotic and
democratic, but holy.”
Key was candid about his experiences after
returning from Iraq.
“When I came back from the war, I was overwhelmed
with depression. Becoming a marine was one of the
very, very best things that had ever happened to me. I
was very happy being a marine. I mean, just driving
around on Camp Pendleton, I felt great. I loved
putting on a uniform, and I loved hanging out with my
fellow marines, who are funny, entertaining, sweet,
awesome people. And finally, after all those years of
struggling with this sexuality thing, I realized, I’ve
got to let go of all that straight-acting bullshit,
and live comfortably in a world … where I’ve got to be
myself. And so here I am with this epiphany, this
waking up, realizing oh my God, this wonderful thing
that’s happened to me in my life has been betrayed and
I cannot continue. Because, ultimately, as much as my
commitment to my country means to me, and how much
being a marine means to me, I am responsible for my
own life to my creator.
The prospect of having to live the rest of my life
and try to keep silent or in some way continue to be a
party to the evil that is the running machine, the
machine I call them, is perpetuating in my country, is
in some ways worse than death. So when all these
things came to light, out of a dark depression, I
remember walking into that office and I remember
raising my right hand, and I thought about what my
oath meant to me. And that is that I’m willing to die
to stand up for, the principles that I believe this
country stands for. So I decided to leave the military
and use Clinton’s stupid DADT policy to leave.”
Key set out to do this on March 31, 2004. Being a
ranking marine and easily accessible at Camp Pendleton
in California, Key was invited on the Paula Zahn Now
show on CNN to discuss soldier morale in the wake of
the killing of the four Blackwater mercenaries in
Fallujah that day. But Key had other plans when he
walked into the Los Angeles bureau.
After showing the video of the brutal treatment of
the corpses of the mercenaries in the streets of
Fallujah, Zahn asked Key, “I know I winced when I saw
these pictures for the first time. When you saw these
images of American soldiers not only being brutally
beaten and murdered, but dragged down the street, what
went through your mind?”
Key responded, “Oh, I first saw it this morning
when I was sitting at the computer. And, honestly, the
first thoughts I had were a lot of intense anger. I
wanted to go back there to find the people who did
that and to hunt them down. It’s the marine in me. I
wanted to exact vengeance for it.”
Then, using the platform he had been offered, he
proceeded to speak out against the US occupation,
quite unexpectedly:
“And then shortly after, I started to think about
the families … There are several families today that
are changed forever because of the events in Iraq
today. I felt a huge amount of sadness for those
people. I know that the American service members that
lost their lives there, the Americans working there
did so out of noble purpose, and it’s really - it’s a
shame. I’ve spent a lot of time and introspection and
thinking since I came back from Iraq about our mission
there, what it meant to me. I have very conflicting
feelings about it. I’m still intensely committed to
the reasons I became a marine four years ago and have
decided this week to leave the Marine Corps, actually,
and came out of the closet as a gay man. I had made
sweeping rationalizations that allowed me to continue
to lie about my sexuality and stay in the Marine Corps
in attempts to stay true to my commitments, to the
reasons I joined. And having come back and having
received a lot of information, things we didn’t know
when we were there, that we were never told about
weapons of mass destruction, about our entering there
in the first place, I just …”
Zahn cut him off, not knowing how to respond to his
comments on Iraq and his sexuality.
Key’s action changed his life. He had let his
marine buddies know in advance of the interview that
he was going to come out on national television in
front of millions of viewers, and had their support.
He had even gone so far as to detail, in a seven-page
letter to his commanding officer, what he was going to
do and why. After the show, however, he was surprised
at the lack of reaction from the military. “Sometimes
with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, people are discharged the
next day, but I just wasn’t getting any answers. Six
months went by.” He was told he would get an “other
than honorable” discharge because he had not been
showing up for drill at his base. He had made that
choice in the hope that the military would immediately
discharge him, as was usually the case with DADT.
It perplexed him. “I was under the impression that
coming out of the closet as a big homosexual meant you
couldn’t be in the United States military anymore.”
That not being the case for him, he resumed service
and started showing up to drill as this out, queer,
anti-war activist on Camp Pendleton, the largest
Marine Corps base on the planet.
“It was awesome, because my being out of the closet
to my buddies enabled us to have some really edifying
conversations. They got to ask me questions, I felt
[I] really made a lot of headway with regard to
homosexuality and misconceptions about it, and about
what gay men think, straight men think, and all that
stuff. So that was sort of multiplied because I was
very out of the closet, [and] five million people had
seen the interview.”
Key took advantage of not being ejected to not only
be forthright about homosexuality, but also be “out of
the closet about the fact that I thought that the
occupation of Iraq was dangerous to my nation. And
that I felt that it was immoral and believed that it
was illegal. We were signers to the UN Charter and to
the Geneva Conventions, and for all manner of reasons,
it was illegal.”
Marines began approaching Key to talk about both
issues, and he was relieved to find that they were all
“really, really cool about it. Even some very
high-ranking enlisted men in my unit pulled me aside
and said, ‘We’re going to take care of you, marine,
you’re still a marine and this is not going to be a
problem for you, and if it is in any way, you come to
me.’”
Even his fellow marines in Iraq have written him
letters of support. Eventually, the major of his unit
told Key he needn’t show up for drill anymore, that he
had fulfilled his obligations. “And I said, OK, sir,
if there is anything I can do for you or my marines,
at any time, please don’t hesitate to call. And then I
drove off base for the last time.”
It has not been easy. Key’s departure began another
period of depression for him. “I left Fort Pendleton
that day and as I was driving … realizing I would
never drive on that base again as a marine was
horrible. I was so angry at the people who had stolen
that from me and just disgusted, disgusted at the
bloodbath that was going on in Iraq and continues to
go on.”
He wanted to just leave it behind, but his
conscience compelled him to speak out. Today, he does
not advise anyone, gay or straight, to enter the
military. “I would say don’t. Do not join the United
States military. In the foreseeable future, no matter
which wing of the one party we have in this country
happens to sit in the White House, their soldiers’
commitment is going to be abused.”
His advice to a young, gay person who may be
considering joining the military is to “work through
your homophobia in another way … If you think that
your homophobia doesn’t have any bearing on your
wanting to join the military, then I would ask them to
examine all the other good reasons somebody might want
to join. If you need money for college, I promise you
there are other ways. Money is not a justification for
what you’ll be asked to do. I would say to those kids,
don’t join.”
For those already in the military, Key says, “I
would tell them to take a long, hard look at how the
military is being used now. If that resonates with
their spirit in a good way, then God bless them and
keep going. If I could ever help you, let me know, I
will. But if it does not resonate with what you
believe to be noble … then step up to the front, say,
‘I’m a big, fat homosexual,’ and leave the military
today.”
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