I was born the son of a US Soldier stationed in West Germany at the time. I traveled quite a bit as a child, including attending nine schools up through High School. I was less than a year old when the first Recognized Gay Rights event took place, the Stonewall Riots.
As I look back over the next couple of decades, while there were definitely signs that I was gay, I did not date, and stayed in the closet, even to myself. The signs included my noticing at Boy Scout summer camp, and Junior High Gym, that I liked looking at boys, more so than the occasional Playboy that we would find as kids.
My father retired from the US Army in the Metro Detroit area of South Eastern Michigan. We lived in a blue collar area, where most of my neighbors worked for the Big 3 Detroit Automakers in some way or another. That makes it a rather blue area politically even today, and Michigan as a whole is considered a swing state. When Walter Mondale was running for President in 1984, his running mate Geraldine Ferraro spoke at my High School. A few days later we had a mock election in advance of the November election that year. Reagan won in a landslide, foreshadowing what he would do on the national level a few days later. For the record 2nd place went to “Bill the Cat” as a write in, Mondale came in 3rd.
After High School, I joined the US Army myself, and served for the next 12 years. 3 years after I enlisted, President Clinton signed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” into law. I came out to myself during that 3 years. I couldn’t come out to anyone else, since if the command even suspected that I was gay, they could “Pursue” or investigate me and when they found evidence that I was gay they could kick me out. You see, before DADT, the Department of Defense considered homosexuality “Incompatible with military service.” The passing of DADT didn’t actually change much. I still couldn’t tell them, but now they couldn’t ask or pursue either.
I should step back slightly and talk about a major event that happened that caused President Clinton to enact DADT. On October 27, 1992, Petty Officer Alan R. Schindler was beaten to death in a public restroom in Japan, for being gay, by two of his shipmates… This story was told in the made for TV movie “Any Mother’s Son” 1997. I will cover this in a later post, but it was a brutal attack, and the President had sympathy for him and his family, and pushed for DADT as a compromise to allowing LGBT people to serve openly. You see the public was not quite ready to accept openly gay people quite yet.
During my last tour in the Army, a soldier this time was killed. PFC Barry Winchell was beaten to death by two members of his unit for having a relationship with a trans women. The Showtime movie “Solders Girl” tells this story, and I will cover it in a future post.
So I left the US Army after 12 years, and moved to California, then to Pennsylvania, then to Wyoming. After moving to Wyoming, I met my husband, came out to my family, and got married. Since then I have not advertised my sexuality, but I have not hidden it either. I was involved with Wyoming Equality, when they one the court case legalizing gay marriage in Wyoming, but have since left the organization.
Now in 2024 I have been married for 13 years, I have yet to have a bad reaction from anyone who I told I was gay.
I have an interest in history, and think it is important for people to know how we got to where we are. In future posts, I plan on covering the events I have mentioned here and others. To begin with, I will concentrate on events that have happened in my lifetime, but I will probably delve into older events once I catch up on those.
See you in the next post.