Marine Captain Antonio Agnone was not kicked out under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but says the military forced him out by not offering support for his relationship. (Photo by Henry Linser)
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KATHERINE VOLIN
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, swamped the military with a multitude of projects and created an urgent need for Arabic-speaking linguists. The problems inherent in an American society that speaks only one language suddenly came into full view: without enough linguists to interrogate suspects, speak with civilians or translate wiretap recordings, the military was missing out on critical knowledge.
Enter Alexander Nicholson. He joined the military and trained to become a human intelligence officer, a desperately needed position that requires linguistic training. Prior to entering the military, he spoke four languages, and as any linguist could tell you, learning additional languages wouldn’t be difficult for him.
But the military expelled Nicholson for being gay just six months after Sept. 11. Despite the move, his government career wasn’t over. Shortly after being kicked out by the military, the Department of Defense stepped in and paid for Nicholson to learn Arabic as a civilian.
“Right after they kicked me out under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, they recognized me for advanced linguistic study and gave me a ton of money to live in Egypt and learn Arabic,” says Nicholson, who is now 26.
Nicholson’s linguistic training didn’t end after Egypt, either. He’s currently teaching himself the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Of course, he won’t be able to use it in the military as long as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is around, so he’s also working to help repeal the ban.
In 2005 while studying at North Georgia Military College, Nicholson founded Servicemembers United, for young military veterans who oppose the ban. Nicholson and his boyfriend had both been offered full rides to GMC because the school’s administration found their situation as two former military personnel kicked out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” “funny” says Nicholson.
It was while driving around Dahlonega, Ga., on Memorial Day that Nicholson got his latest idea for activism.
“They put up American flags everywhere,” Nicholson says. “They line all of the roads in that area with American flags and I thought it was such a neat idea and each one represented a veteran from that area.” The bold representation struck a chord and Nicholson got the idea to put flags on the National Mall to represent all of the service members dismissed under DADT.
THE NUMBER OF FLAGS is 12,000, and Nicholson’s organization is working with the Human Rights Campaign and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, among others, to create the presentation, which will go up on Nov. 30, the 14th anniversary of DADT being signed into law. The display coincides with a host of community events, including a happy hour, a breakfast and a prayer service.
“Events have to be really visual and tell a story,” says Antonio Agnone, 27, who is heading up HRC’s end of the 12,000 Flags presentation. “Sometimes stories simply stated tend to have the most impact.”
Agnone got involved in the project after he completed his four-year service obligation to the Marines. He, like Nicholson, didn’t want to leave the military, but Agnone left because after meeting his partner at President Bush’s 2005 inauguration, his priorities changed.
“I started to have to pay attention to the onuses that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ places on my relationship,” Agnone says.
When they were living in North Carolina, the couple got a house an hour away from the military base so they wouldn’t be noticed. Agnone was deployed to Iraq and things got even more complicated. The first time he was fired on, he found himself wondering about Brandon, his partner.
“If I would have gotten hit, would the military have let Brandon know? … The answer was ‘no,’” Agnone says. “Would he have been able to come see me? The answer was still ‘no.’ My job was dealing with explosives. I got rid of IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices].”
If Brandon were hurt, Agnone wouldn’t necessarily be allowed to go home and take care of him. The weight of living under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” started to take its toll on Agnone.
“When I got back from the desert, we decided as a family as much as I wanted to stay in, it just wasn’t going to happen. I simply put everything down and walked away,” he says. “I held one of the most important jobs in Iraq.” According to Agnone, 80 percent of the casualties in Iraq are caused by IEDs.
“I feel like I’m being almost forced out, even though ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ didn’t tell me [to leave],” he says.
COL. MARGARETHE CAMMERMEYER was told to leave for being a lesbian, though. Cammermeyer realized, after years of knowing she was different, that she was a lesbian when she met her partner in 1988.
In 1989 Cammermeyer, who worked as a chief nurse at the National Guard in Washington State, was seeking a top-secret clearance. She responded honestly that she was a lesbian on the form and the military began discharge proceedings. Cammermeyer protested, was eventually dismissed in 1991 and then she went to federal court, which ruled her discharge was unconstitutional.
In the meantime, the presidential election race was in full swing and then-candidate Bill Clinton picked up her cause.
“My story became newsworthy because I was old, I was a colonel, I had served with distinction in Vietnam, I had finished my doctorate, I had four sons and it made no sense to discharge me,” says Cammermeyer, now 65.
Cammermeyer’s case helped prompt Clinton’s infamous declaration that he would overturn the military’s gay ban.
“In its place became the quote-unquote compromise of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue,” Cammermeyer says. “That has been an absolutely atrocious failure and in some ways no better than what existed beforehand except that no longer are individuals supposed to be asked questions about sexual orientation on entrance to the military or during security clearances, and yet even though they are not supposed to be harassed or pursued, there are the witch hunts that are continuing in the military and have cost us as a society huge investments.”
Nicholson agrees that the ban is far more complicated than its title would indicate.
“It always seemed so simple. They don’t ask you and you won’t tell anyone and you’ll be OK,” Nicholson says, who was outed when the only other person he knew in the Army who spoke Portuguese read a letter he had written in Portuguese to a former lover. “It’s just a sound bite and it’s more accurately described as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Don’t Happen to be Found Out Any Time Any Place Any Way’.”
The cost of the policy — in terms of money and resources — is the angle that activists are hoping will work in their favor.
“Things changed significantly after Sept. 11,” says Steve Ralls, communications director for SLDN. “The public conscience changed and the military itself began changing as well. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ became not just an unnecessary law but a counterproductive law in the eyes of many Americans. The Pentagon’s own statistics show the men and women dismissed under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ are those that the [Department of Defense] believes are mission critical.”
The number of linguists dismissed under DADT has gone up while the need for them has also increased, Ralls says. He says 322 linguists have been dismissed under DADT, 60 of them Arabic linguists, and cites the Pentagon’s figures from the fiscal year of 2004 showing that 800 service members deemed mission critical have been expelled under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Ralls and Cammermeyer both point to the cultural shift toward acceptance of gays in general as a strong motivator for eliminating the policy.
“There is a seismic shift of opinion happening in the military as younger recruits enter the service without the prejudice of their predecessors,” Ralls says. “The days of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ are numbered.”
In the meantime, organizers of the 12,000 flags event hope the visual reminder of what has been lost will have an impact on people.
“I think it could be equated with the laying out of the [AIDS] quilt on the Mall, that you have the visual of this is what we’ve done in terms of losing individuals who are willing to serve in the military,” says Cammermeyer.
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