FINDLAY — A lesbian cadet and recent Findlay High School graduate asked this week to resign from the U.S. Military Academy because she no longer can lie about her sexuality and was troubled by the anti-gay attitudes of some of those around her. Katherine Miller of Findlay also said she wants to fight for repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law, a subject she was studying and writing about as a sophomore sociology major at West Point.
I intend for my resignation to offer a concrete example of the consequences of a failed law and social policy,’ Ms. Miller, a 2008 Findlay graduate, wrote in her resignation letter on Monday, referring to the law against gays serving openly in the military.
She earlier had told the Times Herald-Record in New York that she was openly gay to her family and friends during high school. In the letter, she said she fabricated a heterosexual dating history to share with any fellow cadets who asked. ‘In short, I have lied to my classmates and compromised my integrity and identity by adhering to existing military policy,’ she said.
cleek
see, that’s why we shouldn’t allow gays in the military: they lie!
/idiot
Bob Loblaw
Wasn’t the Senate supposed to have taken care of this little problem months ago? I remember every good little Obot telling us it was a done deal before Memorial Day. When are they voting on the Defense Authorization bill, October? Lame duck session?
If the votes don’t materialize, I don’t see how GLBT can ever trust the administration or Congress again for a long time.
stuckinred
She was on Rachel the other night. What a shame to lose someone with her potential as a leader.
The Moar You Know
@cleek: There’s more than a small nugget of truth in your snark. This young woman should never have joined; she knows the rules as well as the rest of us. Neither should any other gay citizen.
Call it a boycott if you like.
Until DADT is overturned by either executive order (not the best option) or by legislation, gay citizens should damned well boycott the military. It’s sick that the military has been playing this game with queer folks for almost twenty years now, where they will allow them to serve if they lie constantly about what they are. I’d go so far as to call the policy positively sadistic.
cleek
@Bob Loblaw:
i don’t know why this makes me laugh as much as it does.
Anoniminous
Blacks … women … now Homos. How many times do we have to go through this bloody assed nonsense?
Linda Featheringill
Well, the young lady is well and truly out now. On the other hand, nobody can blackmail her about that.
She should continue her activism. The Road of Life is funny and often takes several twists and turns. You really don’t know where it leads.
Blessings on the young lady. May she live long and prosper.
Rosalita
@The Moar You Know:
Do you think that realistically the military will ever be accepting of them? I agree with you; I just wonder if the culture will ever change…
The Moar You Know
@Rosalita: Unequivocally the answer is yes. It took blacks 50 years since Truman desegregated the military in 1948 to be fully accepted, but they are. Women – not quite there yet, but already far more accepted in far more many roles than they were back in the 1990s. Gay folk will have a struggle but it will get done.
Rosalita
@The Moar You Know:
I hope you are right, I hate to see anyone tormented just because they have the nerve to want to serve our country…and yeah, the harassment that female soldiers still have to deal with comes to mind…as if enemy fire weren’t enough to watch for
HumboldtBlue
To echo Moar, yes, Rosalita, the military will more than accept them. Stop thinking of the military as some right-wing bastion, it’s not. It’s as diverse as the rest of society and one of the reasons conservatives hate the idea of allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve is that once it’s ensconced in the military opponents and bigots have no recourse left — there are no street demonstrations on military bases. You obey orders, whether they come from a gay superior or a straight one.
Just as yesterday, when Judge Walker ruled to lift the stay next week, the folks backing the trial here in Cali were getting frantic emails from others around the country to stop now, don’t pursue it any further because they fear once it gets to the Supremes and they lose, they will lose all the bigoted laws they have managed to get passed in 31 other states.
They are desperately trying to hold onto their bigotry-as-the-norm when the walls of their fortresses of dumbassery crumble around them. Let gays serve and what’s next? They can vote? (eerie, eerie similarity to that argument and the argument during the Civil War about letting Negroes serve, particularly in the South) They can demand equal protection under the law? They can get married, buy a house and live happily ever after?
That’s their nightmare and one vehicle to social change that has been proven to be extremely effective is social change within the military where resistance is the same as disobedience, intolerable.
freelancer
@stuckinred:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGcbvuerCfQ
Maddow’s interview with Miller.
TomG
I know that suggesting that we look at what other countries’ policies are is considered anathema to many, but I just looked it up and as of June 2009, 25 countries allow gays to openly serve in their military. Including Israel, Canada, South Africa (!), Spain, and the United Kingdom.
If there was definite evidence of a problem because of this, I would have expected the homophobes to have brought it up by now and to use such evidence to back their claim that the U.S. simply cannot allow the repeal of DADT.
Since this hasn’t happened, I conclude that countries which allow gay people to serve in their military have (for the most part) not found it to create the problems that are assumed to be inevitable.
So….Why again is the U.S. forbidding gay people from serving openly in the military ??
Rosalita
@HumboldtBlue:
I don’t think of it that way, my stepfather and my boyfriend are both retired military and both liberal as can be. But just as with any group of people, not everyone feels that way. My stepfather says there are two camps at the Legion bar, the liberal group and then the racist, homophobic, misogynist one.
I’m a worry-wart, what can I say?
Amanda in the South Bay
I dunno; based on my experience of the Army in the 00s, it’s much more conservative than the general population. There’s a disportionate number of people who cone small towns and rural America, and it shows. Don’t get me started on the ubiquitous evangelical Protestsnt chaplains. Granted, ymmv depending on your MOS, unit, etc.
stuckinred
@Rosalita: I have a very good friend who was SF in the Nam and he, like Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis, are vehemently opposed to gays serving openly in the military. They are convinced it is the start of all kinds of special requests being made by this “interest group”. I had gay friends in both Korea and Vietnam and it had no impact on their ability to do their job. I don’t know if there would be any difference in line outfits or the spook operations.
Rosalita
@stuckinred:
You’d think if someone made through special ops training they would garner enough respect that sexual orientation wouldn’t matter. I’ll ask the boyfriend (USAF ParaRescue), and see what he says.
PS-stepfather has become so disgusted with morans at his local Legion he barely goes there anymore.
stuckinred
@Rosalita: Here’s Lang’s post
The farcical process of authorizing the open military service of gay people is yet to play out, but the outcome of that process is foreordained. The Gay Movement has powerful friends in government and the media. In a year or so, the force will begin to be somewhat different and that difference will grow greater as time passes and gay soldiers become more confident of the security of their position.
dj spellchecka
not to get in a big food fight, but the military, especially the officer class, overwhelmingly identifies as republicans according to the last study i read….
and not to trivialize this story, but greg rucka’s origin story for the newest version of batwoman is virtually identical to katherine miller’s …..
JNobot
We never would have had DADT if Clinton were in the White House!
Zuzu's Petals
Well, at least she resigned before she’d be required to commit to finishing her four years (at risk of having to repay the academy) and serving her five years on active duty. Possibly she agonized over this decision until the last practical moment.
What a shame.