The Personal Horror of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

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Imagine that you just escaped a fatal accident and knew that if you had died, your spouse would not have been notified. That's what happened to Naval Capt. Joan E. Darrah on Sept. 11, 2001, after she left a meeting in the Pentagon. The meeting lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Seven minutes later, the exact area of the Pentagon where Darrah sat was hit by the third plane in the four-plane terrorist attack.

Darrah's first thoughts were of her partner, Lynne Kennedy. Because Darrah works for the U.S. Navy, no one knew she had spent 17 years of her life with Kennedy. No one knew Darrah was a lesbian because if they did, the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy would force her to be fired. So she kept it a secret.

"The plane hit the Pentagon at the space where I had just left," says Darrah. "That changed my whole perspective on life, 'What if I had been killed? My poor partner.' Eventually she would have learned, but my partner wasn't on my paperwork."

Darrah, 56, a 30-year Naval veteran, retired soon after Sept. 11.

"Every day I thought people would figure it out," says Darrah of her time hiding her orientation while serving. "Imagine if someone who is married mentions their wife and they're fired."

Darrah, along with Army Col. Stewart Bornhoft and Army Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr, who all are retired, will speak about hiding their orientation while in the military and ask for support to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy tomorrow, Aug. 3,  at a program benefiting the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) at Chicago's Center on Halsted roof garden.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was enacted in 1993 and thought to be an improvement because before its enactment, being LGBT barred a person from military service. The policy also ended intrusive questions about service members' orientation and stopped the military's investigations to smoke out suspected members.

"Sometimes [military officials] used strong-arm tactics to throw people out," says Kerr, 74, who was one of the highest-ranking military officers to reveal he was gay when he came out in a 2003 New York Times article.

Kerr was a teenager in 1950 when Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that Soviet spies and Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government. McCarthyism taught him certain aspects of a person's life are best kept secret. He retired from the California State Military Reserves in 1995 after 31 years in the Army and the Reserves, primarily with intelligence groups.

"The basic premise I started with is that if you wanted to be successful in life, you had to keep that to yourself," says Kerr.

Currently, "don't ask, don't tell" authorizes the firing of an American in the military for being LGBT so a service member's honest statement of his or her orientation to anyone, anywhere, anytime may lead to being fired, according to SLDN.

SLDN research reveals that the policy causes the Pentagon to fire at least two people every day. Moreover, it has discharged more than 11,000 service members, including dozens of Arabic linguists and hundreds of people with critical skills. The policy has cost more than $360 million in taxpayer funds between 1994 and 2003, according to SLDN.

"At the time I was growing up in the 1960s we didn't have [TV shows with gay characters such as] 'Will and Grace' and magazines like DiversityInc," says Bornhoft, 60. "By the time I understood my feelings and understood what they meant, I had already gone through West Point, commanded in Vietnam, and gotten married."

Bornhoft served in the Army for 26 years before he retired in 1995, was married for 20 years and has two children who are now in their 20s. He currently lives with his partner in Southern California. During the end of his service, Bornhoft was the director of public works in Oklahoma where, following the Oklahoma City bombing 1995, he was the defense-coordination officer managing relief efforts for the Department of Defense. Had anyone known Bornhoft was gay, he would have been discharged.

Bornhoft says "don't ask, don't tell" harms the armed forces because "A simple question of what [you did] this weekend, you can't answer truthfully if you spent it with gay friends. It legally mandates that [LGBT service members] be less than honest and prevents them from having the same rights that other service members have when it comes to spousal benefits or housing allowances or notices to next of kin or simply kissing loved ones when you deploy to defend the country. And when returning, you can't be there with all the other spouses and friends who are welcoming you home because you could be fired."

Since retiring, Bornhoft and Darrah say they welcome the freedom to be honest.

"I can honestly say I never lied [about being a lesbian] but I committed the sin of omission for sure," says Darrah, who always gave general descriptions of her activities outside of work before retiring. "I used 'we' or 'a group' or whatever, but I never actually lied."

Since her near-death experience and coming out, Darrah says she starts every day with her "glass half-full." She still hears from current LGBT service members who now speak to her about their struggle. At a recent SLDN dinner, a young intelligence officer, who was preparing to deploy to Iraq and who worked under Darrah when she was the deputy commander and chief of staff for the Naval Intelligence Command, told her he was considering resigning.

"He was concerned that he'd never be able to have a partner," says Darrah.

The intelligence officer's predicament is not unique. According to The Williams Institute at UCLA, if the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had not been instituted, an estimated 4,000 LGBT military personnel would have been retained each year since 1994. 

Bornhoft, too, is thankful that he can openly work to support SLDN and repeal "don't ask, don't tell." He came out at the request of his ex-wife who had hidden the reason for their divorce for a year--even from their children. After he came out, Bornhoft's daughter accepted him but he and his son were estranged for a while.

"To this day I don't know what triggered his change," says Bornhoft about reconciling with his son. "But I now feel closer to my son and daughter than I ever have in my life. They treat my partner ... as an equal partner."

Darrah adds that it's time the U.S. military follow the path started by 24 other countries that have lifted lesbian and gay bans, countries that include Canada, Australia, England and Israel, she says.

"Our guys and gals are already serving side by side next to gay people in Iraq," says Darrah. "It's visceral how wrong I think this law is."

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