Out In The Mountains : News - The Colonel Serves With Pride

by Euan Bear

       South Royalton – On October 7, the Vermont Law School Alliance Group hosted its annual conference, this year's installment on gay men and lesbians serving in an institutionally homophobic military. A second focus was on the United States government’s attempt to force universities and law schools to allow military recruiters on campus in defiance of those schools' nondiscrimination policies.
       Keynote speaker Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer (U.S. Army, retired) applauded Vermont Law School as "a law school that stands up for its privilege and isn't intimidated by the federal government."
Then she said, "I love attorneys!" to laughter from a mostly law-school student audience.
         Cammermeyer is one of a small handful of servicemembers who have mounted individual and ultimately successful legal challenges to the armed forces' pre-"Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Harass, Don't Pursue" (DADT) anti-gay policy. Beginning in 1989 with a routine interview in pursuit of a top-secret security clearance needed for her next promotion, that challenge was finally resolved nearly 5 years later when she was reinstated to the Washington State National Guard under court order. She retired after 31 years of service in 1997.
        And now, she says on her website, she is still serving, but this time it's the lesbian and gay members of the armed forces and their families she serves by continuing to speak out against homophobia. It is, she says, damaging to our country's military strength and preparedness and costly to the people involved and the country, besides, to investigate and discharge servicemembers simply because of their orientation.
        Much of the colonel's talk rehearsed her history from being the baby sleeping atop weapons her mother was delivering to Norwegian resistance fighters in World War II, to serving in Vietnam and challenging the military’s policy of discharging women who became pregnant, up through the making of the movie of her life following her win against the government and being out as a gay activist.
       She noted the irony in being reinstated to her rank as a colonel in the Army Reserve under the DADT policy when there was both a book and a movie out in the world about her as a lesbian.
        One reason she loves attorneys is the caring work several of them put in to argue her case in civilian and military hearings. She credits Lambda Legal and the Northwest Women's Law Center for taking on her case. "You probably know better than most what private attorneys bill per hour. I was a single mother, I was going to school, working two jobs. A private attorney would have been extraordinarily expensive."
       She described the phone call from her lawyer on the day the ruling was issued. "He called me and said, 'Colonel, good morning. How you doing today, Colonel?' He kept addressing me as 'colonel,' and I still didn't get it, but he finally told me we had won." Her case had been successful on grounds that she had been denied due process and equal protection.
       Cammermeyer's four sons and grandchildren support her, she said, including the son who is a Mormon. They all came to the wedding ceremony she and partner Diane Divelbess held at their Whidbey Island home, after having eloped to Oregon for a briefly legal marriage.
       In a throw-away line, Cammermeyer implied that the U.S. military is a cult: "As with other cults," she said, referring to her own indoctrination and the loss of her sense of faith in the government and military justice.
       Cammermeyer acknowledged some of the servicemembers who died because of the armed forces' institutional homophobia, such as Allen Schindler and Barry Winchell.
       Despite the continuing DADT policy, Cammermeyer counts as part of the achievement of her case that recruits are no longer asked questions about homosexuality at enlistment or for promotion.
       And, although she admitted there were unanticipated consequences to her actions challenging the government, "I have no regrets."