Dec 19, 2003  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

During his 43-year career in the United States Army, Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr said he worried regularly that someone would discover his sexual orientation. He was aware of the “brutal interrogations” suspected gays received from commanding officers. In one instance, he said an investigator threatened to throw a soldier down a flight of stairs if he did not admit to being gay.

“I knew I just had to be very cautious about my lifestyle and who I share my social life with,” said Kerr, now 70, who served tours of duty in Japan and Germany before retiring from the California State Military Reserves in 1995.

“I was never harassed or accused of being gay but officers would often find some young, vulnerable soldier and force them to hand over their address book and want to know all of the names of the gay people they knew. And that practice allowed the investigator the opportunity to implicate a number of people in the command.”

Kerr, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., said there was no uniform policy to expel gays from the Army. He said that during his time in Japan, commanding officers installed hidden cameras in buildings across the street from gay bars to try to record who frequented the establishments.

Concealing his sexual orientation for 43 years requited an overwhelming effort that took a significant psychological toll, said Kerr.

“I was paranoid, constantly looking to see if anyone was following me,” Kerr said. “For years I had a recurring dream about an investigator who was always on my trail. We would each exchange threats. I would taunt him. He would taunt me. A nightmare.”

10,000 discharged in 10 years of DADT
This year marks the 10th anniversary of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the compromise policy adopted by then-President Bill Clinton and Congress to allow gays to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation hidden. Since the policy’s implementation, nearly 10,000 men and women have been discharged from the military under DADT, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gays and lesbians in the military.

In an effort to bring greater attention to the impact of DADT, Kerr and another retired general as well as a retired admiral, came out in a New York Times article last week. Kerr, along with Brig. Gen. Virgil A. Richard and Rear Adm. Alan M. Steinman of the Coast Guard are the most senior uniformed officers to openly critique DADT and call for its repeal.

“Our current policy hinders young men from entering the service,” said Richard, who served 32 years in the Army and was assigned to the military assistance command headquarters in Vietnam. “We must convince Congress that a change in the policy is in the nation’s best interest for national defense. Even though we don’t have a recruitment problem, we will have one in the future.”

Fifteen senior retired military leaders, including Kerr, Richard and Steinman, issued a joint statement calling for repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly gay and lesbian service members.

“There is one inescapable conclusion — “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” does not work and should be repealed,” they said in a statement to SLDN. “Today, no credible evidence exists to support a continued ban. Indeed, all studies, including those commissioned by the Pentagon, have come to that conclusion.”

Department of Defense officials would not comment on the senior military officers’ announcement but issued a statement saying that the policy is “based in law” and that “Congress has stated that homosexual conduct poses risks to unit cohesion and readiness.” The statement added, “The Department continues to work tirelessly to administer that law in a manner that is both fair and consistent.”

‘I simply stayed in the closet where I had been my whole life,’ retired Adm. Alan M. Steinman said of his 25 years in the U.S. Coast Guard.

‘I couldn’t be who I was’
Like Kerr, Richard said that not being able to publicly acknowledge his sexual orientation in the military took a psychological toll on him.

“I had so much at stake with a 20-year career in the military that I couldn’t turn my back on it,” said Richard, who retired immediately after the first Gulf War in 1991.

“I wanted to get my retirement and health care, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize that. So I suffered mentally ...