With controversy surrounding the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and many members of Congress supporting its repeal, a loud voice of one who has felt its effects speaks to the campus.
“Courage and Camouflage: One Soldier’s Experience with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, an event coordinated by the Cultural Events Board, brought gay rights activist Lt. Dan Choi, who served under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for 10 years, to share his story with a crowded room of students and community members on Thursday.
The majority of people waiting in anticipation for him to begin speaking at the crowded Glenn Miller Ballroom said they were very excited and intrigued to hear his personal perspective.
“I did not really have a lot of knowledge about this prior to coming, but I am interested in what he has to say,” said Emiliano Lowe, a 20-year-old junior psychology major.
Some said they came in support of family members who are gay and serving in the military under this policy.
Daniel Robbins, a 23-year-old junior ethnic studies major and whose gay brother has served for about six years, said he wants to know more about the process.
“There have been times when my brother would do things that would worry me about him getting kicked out, but people should have the right to do what they want,” Robbins said.
The relevancy of the discussion brought many others to attend.
“I felt this was really relevant with all the stuff going on about being openly gay,” said Samantha Wills, a 21-year-old senior advertising major. “I’m interested in hearing a real, raw perspective because I think everything we hear in the media is what they want us to hear. I’m excited to hear what they don’t want us to and what really goes on.”
Kathryn Wiley, a graduate student studying education, said the importance of the subject is what drew her to the event.
“The repeal of this law is so important and I want to hear Lt. Dan’s first-hand experience to get things to change,” Wiley said. “Popular culture and the media really lack the human element in a sad way. They are so caught up with religious ideology that people often cannot recognize human rights at that point.”
Danielle Peck, a 21-year-old senior English and philosophy double major and vice chair of the Cultural Events Board, said they were very pleased with the event and turnout and thought it was very successful.
The former American infantry officer, Iraq war veteran, West Point graduate and renowned GLBT activist passionately shared his experience as a gay American soldier in a humorous way that often felt like watching a comedy show.
Choi first took the stage in a dramatic opening presentation of a day spent in Baghdad, Iraq, applying his fluency in Arabic and making comparisons to the concealment of being Shiite in order to live and hiding being gay to serve in the military.
“We would tell them, ‘you should never be afraid of who you are!’ and that you can be equal and that it didn’t matter where you came from, you did not need to be afraid,” Choi said.
He said he didn’t mind serving under the guise of heterosexuality but the breaking point was knowing if something had happened to him, his boyfriend would not receive the same rights of being informed.
“Yes, I broke the rule,” he said. “You’re damn right, I am a troublemaker at 27 but now I understand what love means to me, being in love with a boyfriend.”
He said “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is unfair to partners.
“Having someone support you when you go to war to never be notified requires not only you staying in the closet,” Choi said. “I was not just in the closet myself, it also required putting my lover in the closet. He was not even in the military.”
Choi said he was more nervous to go home to his South Korean family with deep, conservative religious beliefs than serving as a gay man.
“The bottom line was that not only did I fall in love, but I liked ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” he said. “My father is a Southern Baptist minister, I did not want to come out. I had ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ at home. Flying back home was harder than flying into combat.”
The answer he gave to his parents when they questioned why he was coming out was because he wanted to help others.
“I told my parents that I want to make a better life for gay people and transgender people like you did before,” he said. “Being an activist made me a better soldier.”
Choi was officially discharged from the military on June 29 and has since spent his life campaigning for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and becoming a prominent activist for the GLBT community, according to the CEB event program.
Choi said another counter-argument he presented to his parents was found in the golden rule: ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’
“How can I practice this when the Bible is teaching me not to love myself?” he said.
Another way he was able to stand strong against the questions and accusations of his family was choosing to be honest with them out of love and respect.
“If I am really going to love and honor my parents then I will not hold a lie down in my heart,” he said. “If you really want to love someone unconditionally, how can you hold a secret from them? Challenge those you value and love by providing them with the truth and teaching them about values like: loyalty, duty, honor of self and service, love thy neighbor as thyself, and integrity.”
The greatest of these values, he said, is courage and is the only one that makes the others worthwhile.
“If you do not have courage, how can you have the others?” he said before referencing boys and men who have killed themselves for being gay. “Courage is not crazy and does not cause conflict. Our courage is the only thing that can stop these suicides from happening and the courage to say something.”
He explained the differences between loud and silent homophobia and the importance and consequences of both.
“Loud homophobia and silent homophobia have the same result,” he said. “It is up to you to tell people that you love them.”
Claiming personal identity and respecting that we, individually, are of significance was another main point he addressed.
In doing so, he led the audience to acknowledge the statement, “I am somebody,” while repeating after him: “I am somebody. I deserve full equality right here, right now. I deserve equality. I am somebody. I am somebody. I am somebody.”
He added that this can also be applied to coming out as gay.
“When you come out, it is not about your liberation,” he said. “It is about some other person who hears that if they are somebody, then I am somebody, too.”
In closing, before a long applause and standing ovation, Choi encouraged the crowd.
“You have a little light no matter what other people tell you,” he said. “It is telling everyone that has come before you I have a little light and I’m going to let it shine.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Christine Larsen at Christine.larsen@colorado.edu.
