Before joining the Army, I had never met anybody whom I knew to be gay. While I served on active duty, however, I had the opportunity to serve side-by-side with openly gay men and women the entire five years, some of whom happened to be the finest soldiers and motivators I knew. This stands in direct contrast to the rationale that policy makers and senior military brass in Washington continue to put forth for why the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law is still needed today. While these officials surmise that those openly gay soldiers with whom I served should have caused the collapse of unit cohesion, morale, and combat readiness in our units, needless to say they didn't.
My patriotism and a desire to speak on my own behalf now as a veteran are what inspired me, an unlikely gay rights activist, to begin speaking out against the DADT policy by becoming a member of a small but innovative and dynamic new group called Servicemembers United (http://www.servicemembersunited.org). My best friend from the Army and one of the co-founders of SU, Jarrod Chlapowski, was stationed with me at nearly every unit to which I was assigned throughout our active duty careers. Everywhere Chlapowski served, he neither hid nor made a big deal over his sexual orientation; neither did anyone else. Though this experience is contrary to the detached logic that Congress and "the Brass" use to keep the DADT policy around, the actual reality to which I am attesting here is the "boots-on-the-ground" and "in-the-trenches" truth of the modern military environment – don't ask and don't discharge, because no one cares.
After I got off active duty, Jarrod contacted me about an opportunity to serve with him again in Servicemembers United. Quite frankly, I'm almost more proud of this opportunity to serve my country than I am of the time I spent in the military. My military service was an opportunity for me to help my country achieve its strategic goals outside of its borders. This time, however, is about improving my country domestically to extend the opportunity for honest military service to all patriots, not just the straight ones.
Servicemembers United aims to be a different kind of policy advocacy organization, and that is what attracted me to the group and motivated me to get involved in the fight to repeal DADT. SU's messaging and image realistically represent the voices and the faces of real servicemembers and veterans, including their straight allies, and I've watched over the past two years as SU and its predecessor group, Call To Duty, have achieved remarkable results – some publicly and some behind the scenes – with their unique creativity, tailored strategies, and effective tactics. The core of young veterans who founded SU – some of whom you've seen on 60 Minutes , CNN, the covers of the Advocate and elsewhere – founded the organization because they believed that more targeted and strategic work needed to be done in order to lay the groundwork for DADT's eventual repeal. I was inspired as I saw the friends I had served with become actively involved with this organization and as I saw them grow personally with its rapid successes.
This past fall, I decided to become a more active member of SU's cadre, and the time and place of the first speaking opportunity that came along couldn't have been better. SU had been working with the Nebraska Public Policy Center to schedule a speaking engagement at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where I currently attend university, so I quickly jumped at the chance to become part of this panel of high-caliber veterans and discuss the "straight" perspective on DADT. In addition to getting the issue covered on local TV and radio in an area of Nebraska where DADT is rarely thought about, countless fellow Nebraskans got the chance to gain insights into an issue that many of them, although supportive, really knew very little and heard very little about.
I am proud to have served with gay men and women in the armed forces, and I am a better person for having done so with those who had the courage to be honest about who they really are. It was not easy for me to step out on the "gay rights activist" limb as a straight guy from Nebraska, but I felt a conviction to continue serving my country now in this capacity, and I have never felt so supported in my life. Thank you for this support, and for being proud gay Americans. You make both this nation and its military stronger, and I only hope that one day our country comes to terms with its own orientation and can recognize you for all that you continue to contribute to it.