About Face

You can ban us, but you can't break us.

WACS, including my pal Army Staff Sergeant Borr (center), clubbing, 1947.

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It’s Memorial Day Weekend in America, and I’d like to take a moment to mention Queer service.

It’s an established fact that queer people have served in the American military since the Revolutionary War.

We serve at higher rates than the general population: 21% of transgender people have a history of military service, a rate more than double the general population. Up to 17% of queer people have served in the U.S. armed forces, versus only 7% to 8% of the general U.S. adult population.

There are more than 1,000,000 LGBTQ veterans in America, a likely undercount.

There is zero evidence that LGBTQ+ identity negatively affects military service. In fact, queer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are frequently the highest-achieving can-do troops.

At present, transgender, gender expansive and nonbinary people are barred from service. This baseless prejudice negatively affects unit cohesion and diminishes readiness. The policy is wrong and wrong-headed, a ban promulgated by a man utterly without honor. A man who, when called to serve, repeatedly dodged his obligation.

I served in the U.S. Army Reserve in the late 1970s and 80s. LGBTQ people were everywhere in the ranks, serving proudly (often invisibly) and typically with distinction. It seemed a kind of golden era for lesbians (although the Department of Defense had actually strengthened its anti-gay policy during the Carter Administration). The Army – fresh from the PR crisis of Vietnam and the disposal of the draft – needed bodies and didn’t much care if we were queer, or not.

In reality, between 1980 and 1990, an average of 1,500 military service members were discharged annually on the basis of sexual orientation.

I had checked “no” to question No. 37f on the Army enlistment form: “Have you ever engaged in homosexual activity (sexual relations with another person of the same sex)?” But I looked like one thing: a “baby butch,” as my friends teased. I didn’t tell but everything about me was telling.

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Queer Army Privates Gershick & Harshaw, Ft. Jackson, SC, 1978.

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In 1993, President Bill Clinton ushered in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, a de facto ban, that arguably left us worse off, not better. The short form was this: Under the old Department of Defense policy, the military had to prove the accused was queer. Under DADT, federal law, the service member had to prove they weren’t. Moreover, commanders no longer had any discretion in whether to retain or discharge a troop.

Ten years after the passage of DADT, nearly 10,000 highly motivated, keenly trained LGBTQ service members had been cashiered.

I’d dodged the bullet, but many outstanding soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines had been discharged merely for being gay.

An Army nurse who served in the first Persian Gulf War told me that her hospital unit had an enormous LGBT presence, including the ward masters and many of the nurses and medics. They served with distinction, she said, and when, at conflict’s end, they returned stateside for promotions and benefits, all summarily were discharged for being gay.

Translation: If you’re queer, you’re good enough to die but not good enough to honor or retain when the shooting stops.

So I took up my pen and wrote a series of profiles of those top-performing queer troops for the Texas Triangle – the Lesbian & Gay Newsweekly of Austin – and the Texas Observer. These profiles laid the groundwork for my book Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military

(In 2022, my pal Máel Embser-Herbert, with Space Force Col. Bree Fram, co-edited a companion volume, focusing on transgender troops, With Honor & Integrity: Transgender Troops in Their Own Words.)

So here we are, Memorial Day weekend of America’s Semiquincentennial – the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding – and how are we doing? Horribly, from my perspective. There’s major work to do. It has been only 60+ plus years since we’ve actually been a democracy and a major cracker retrenchment is underway. (Including the forced retirement of senior Black and women military leaders.)

The Struggle to form a more perfect union continues.

“It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it,” says Pirke Avot, a compilation of Jewish ethical teachings and maxims.

And so I offer you a bisel Secret Service, two mini remembrances of queer service members for you to chew on this Memorial Day weekend. May they illuminate where we’ve been, and where we yet must go.

About Face

This Army NCO married a man to deflect the daily barbs and divert what she feared could be a full-on queer bashing.

I was stationed at units that could not have functioned without their queer soldiers. If they’d have put all of us out, there would have been no personnel left!

I remember a gay cook we had in a hospital unit. He used to get up earlier than the other cooks (Wow! That’s early!) and make extra batches of cookies. This was done because, in his words, “I know ya’ll pigs.”

He was the reigning drag empress in our town. He represented the local gay bar at the state and regional drag queen-a-rama. He wore pantyhose with his Class Bs. We loved him, and he loved us, straight or gay.

A new private was assigned to our unit. This boy was making the rounds informing any who would listen that he believed a certain cook to be a faggot. We assured him that not only did this “news” have no bearing on our mission, but we had the situation under control and that if he enjoyed eating regularly he would shut his trap or become very hungry.

–A. G. Flynn

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About Face

This Vietnam-era Marine placed in the top of her class during 32-weeks of intensive aviation and electronics training at NAS Memphis. In a mostly male preserve, she found not even the civilians were on her side.

People got off base whenever possible. We were just exhausted from the regimen from schooling. Getting pumped full of electronics data eight or 10 hours a day will do that to you.

There was a park right along the Mississippi River that everybody went to. It was a make-out spot, a hang-out spot, a place to get away from the base for awhile. I didn’t really have any clue about homosexuality or the dangers because of attitudes at that point in time – and still, in many, many places. I’m convinced that the angels were with me.

This one time we were there, my girlfriend fell asleep on the seat with her head on my lap. We hadn’t been necking. We’d been sitting there chatting, and we dozed off. I woke up to somebody trying to get in the car. I poked her and woke her up. There were four or five guys surrounding the car. Good ol’ boys.

I got the car started. It was a very long, narrow, winding road that led into the park, three to five miles to the main road. So I took off.

They got in their car and started following us. They tried to run me off the road. I was able to out-maneuver them. One of the things we used to do for fun when we were teenagers was play chasing games with cars, so I had had plenty of experience. I thank God for it.

We got out to Highway 51, outside of Millington. Again, they pulled level with my car. They were hanging outside, trying to open our car doors. I went into very protective mode and told my girlfriend to get down on the floor and stay there. At 75 miles an hour, they threw a rock and it broke our back window. Some of the glass flying through hit me in the back of the head. I didn’t even slow down. I knew where the police station was and drove right there.

My girlfriend was totally shaken. We turned in our reports at the police station and drove back to the base.

The next morning we found out that any number of people had seen a car matching the description that we gave. In fact, the boys had pulled shotguns and fired on some other women. The police eventually did get the guys. My fear had been that because we were two women they figured out there was something between us. But, in fact, it was just because we were in the military. They just didn’t like women in the military.

-Belle A. Pellegrino, PFC, USMC, 1968-69

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Yours truly, in the office of the post newspaper, pounding it out, circa 1980. The story: A profile of a Herculean motor-pool master sergeant whose bodybuilding regimen included lifting Jeeps. (Writers gotta start somewhere.)

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Notes

Transgender Military Service in the United Stateshttps://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-military-service-us/

Black Americans also join the military at higher rates, compared to their share of the civilian population; whereas white people underrepresent their share. https://usafacts.org/about-usafacts/

On January 25, 2021, President Joe Biden reversed his predecessor’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military with Executive Order 14004, titled “Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform.” Mr. Biden’s EO restored protections first put in place by former President Barack Obama, who opened the armed services to qualified transgender people. “What I’m doing is enabling all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform,” said Biden.

On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed EO 14183, misnamed “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to adopt policies that would prohibit transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from serving in the military. This order further claimed trans people are incapable of meeting military entrance requirements, and lack the “selflessness and humility” required for military service.

https://transequality.org/resources/understanding-trumps-trans-military-ban

A Brief History of LGBT Military Policy and Improving Acceptance, Integration and Health among LGBT Service Members

https://transequality.org/resources/understanding-trumps-trans-military-ban

Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military (Alyson Books, 2005), was winner of the ForeWord Book of the Year Award for LGBT Nonfiction, and a featured title on C-SPAN’s Book TV.

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