by E. Lynne Lemont

     She joined the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) in high school. Having grown up in an army family in another state, it seemed like the right thing to do. Now she’s in Vermont, training with the Green Mountain Boys, and right in the thick of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ She agreed to an interview with OITM on condition that her identity be kept confidential, so we’ll call her “Lois Marshall.”
      “I’ve put in four years and I’ve got two to go,” Lois said. “My home unit is in another state, and if they were to get orders to go to Kuwait or Iraq, I’d have an option not to go because I’ve got school to finish. But if my girls were shipped out, they wouldn’t go without me. I’d go.”
      Lois said she’s been out as a bisexual woman since she was 15. She even took another woman to the JROTC ball in high school. “In the Guard, they know” about her bisexuality, “but they don’t officially know. I’m not the only one,” she continued. “Some of the members of my home unit go home at night to their same-sex partners.”
      But here in Vermont, she said, “they don’t know at all.” Lois isn’t sure it would make much difference to the men she trains with: “The men [in the Guard] here are only threatened by [gay] men.” But, she added, “If they’re trying to get you out for something else they’ll use [sexual] orientation. The word ‘dyke’ doesn’t get people killed. The word ‘faggot’ does.”
      She’s referring to gay-bashing on U.S. army bases, including the murder of PFC Barry Winchell by a baseball bat-wielding fellow soldier at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. President Bush re-nominated Major General Robert T. Clark, that base’s former commanding general, to Lieutenant General, the Army’s second highest rank, despite concerns about his handling of anti-gay harassment among soldiers under his command.
      “A friend of mine in the Army came out to his C.O. [Commanding Officer], and they rushed his processing through on a psych discharge for his own safety,” Lois related. “It’s not a dishonorable discharge, it’s usually for something else, like a medical or psychiatric discharge code, a sideways way of discharging gay people.”
      In its report, Conduct Unbecoming, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network quotes a soldier whose Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) instructed his unit, during hand grenade training, to visualize “blowing up a gay bar.” The same soldier told SLDN he heard NCOs tell soldiers that “the only way to decrease our nuclear arsenal is to put all fags on an island and nuke it.”
      The Army, Lois stated flatly, “makes no distinction between being a lesbian and being bisexual. All you can be is straight – single or married – but straight or gay, period.”
      Because she’s no longer in the ROTC, she does not receive the scholarships available through that program. She does receive a monthly paycheck from the National Guard and what she described as a “minuscule” discount from UVM – about $200 per year, she said – on her tuition because of her military service.
      “Once you sign up for the Army, you sign away your First Amendment rights. I don’t feel I should have to hide anything,” Lois explained, “but my C.O. is in the same boat I am.” She said her immediate commanding officer in her home unit is a lesbian, though, of course, not officially. And, Lois said, if she were to come out as bisexual (to the Army that would be tantamount to identifying as a lesbian), it would bring unwelcome attention to her home unit and her commanding officer.
      According to a report by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military of the University of California at Santa Barbara, lesbians in the military are much more likely to be expelled than gay men. In 1999, almost a third of the 1,046 American military members discharged because of their sexual orientation were women, although they made up only 14 percent of the active armed forces.
      SLDN estimates thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lesbian, gay and bisexual troops are serving in the current Middle East conflict. Gays and lesbians are excluded from a formal “Stop Loss” order preventing the discharge of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, but the rates of discharge have decreased substantially in 2002 and 2003 compared to previous years.
      Regarding the current war in Iraq, Lois said, “I’ve got a ‘get out of jail free’ card because I’m in school,” and declared that she wouldn’t use her student deferment because, “I’d feel like I was betraying people” in her home unit. “I’m not going to invalidate a conflict my comrades are being killed in.
      “The antiwar protests by the public invalidate the risks that [people in the armed services] are taking. It’s easy to say ‘Stop the War’ when you’re not involved and not at risk.”
      But don’t confuse her with a Republican, Lois insisted. “I voted for Nader. I don’t particularly like George W. Bush. But when I’m in [a military action], my friends are being killed. They’re your family. You’re going to protect your family.”
      Lois was previously involved in a relationship with another soldier, a Master Sergeant, who at the time of our interview was not only in Iraq, but was reportedly a prisoner of war. “He wrote me a letter from Iraq before he was captured saying he was just doing his job. A lot of those people may not believe in the reasons for the conflict, but they have to do their jobs.” According to an email from Lois at press time, the Master Sergeant had been “located,” but “in ARMY terms that could mean a lot of things, like they misplaced him in the first place. He will be home in July.”

E. Lynne Lemont lives and writes in Franklin County.