The HyperTexts
The Living Hell of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"
by Bleu Copas, a gay former Army Sergeant and Arabic linguist
The beginning of my story looks a lot like that of many other Tennesseans, and
Americans for that matter. I remember sitting on my dad’s shoulders waving a
small flag as we joined the community lining Johnson City streets to welcome home
our troops. I sat in church every Sunday listening to my preacher using his old Navy stories
from World War II to keep my attention. My uncles showed off their battle scars and bullet wounds
from their tours in Vietnam. Early on, these great role models were helping me
form a burning desire to serve my country, to wear the uniform.
The best decision I ever made was to enlist in the United States Army. On September 11, 2001,
I was in the middle of my graduate studies at East Tennessee State University, but naturally
I decided to put my studies on hold in order to satisfy my personal
obligation as an American to defend my country.
My two-year training included stints at Fort Jackson, SC for Basic Training, the Defense
Language Institute in Monterey, CA to learn Arabic, and Airborne School at Fort Benning, GA. I was
quickly becoming very proficient with the skills needed to do my job and necessary to take care of my
soldiers. However, just short of four years’ service, my extensive Arabic
training and Top Secret security clearance were thrown out the window, and my
platoon in the 82nd Airborne Division lost a proven leader and
experienced paratrooper. All because of an eight-month anonymous email campaign
to convince my leaders to discharge me under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.
Although I received an honorable discharge and still consider myself a respectable veteran,
my discharge continues to haunt me, instilling doubts in me that my
service is somehow less credible or reputable. In the last couple of weeks though, I have been
encouraged to hear our top military and bipartisan political leaders speaking out about their
intentions to lift the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.
The law is sorely outdated and is crippling many of our company and battalion commanders by forcing them
to make decisions that weaken their units’ readiness. My commander told me the day he handed me my discharge
papers, that he regretted losing one of his best leaders, and that he did not
feel I deserved to be fired by my country.
I never felt threatened or uncomfortable as a gay service member and even though everyone I
worked with knew they were working alongside a gay soldier, it never became an issue of tension in our ranks.
In fact, I have never felt like I belonged to a family more than I did with my fellow soldiers. When I
broke my leg and couldn’t get around on my own, my buddies stepped up to
help me. The fact that I am gay did not change the shared values of selfless service
that had brought us to the military. It didn’t change their willingness to help me get in and out of the shower.
They were, and still are, my family.
Some lingering supporters of this discriminatory law mistakenly assume that these kinds of familial
relationships can’t exist without somehow destroying morale or compromising mission accomplishment. However,
every study ever done regarding the issue of gays in the military—even the one lawmakers supposedly
referenced in the 1993 decision to implement DADT—has debunked this myth, proving just the opposite.
The fact is that it’s an insult to America’s service members to assume they can’t handle being confronted
with soldiers of a different value system, race, religion, sexual preferences, or age.
On a daily basis, soldiers are already maturely dealing with these differences, and
their missions are still being accomplished. It is long past time to
allow all service members to serve with integrity and honesty, and not live in
fear that the government may be forced to fire them needlessly.
Bleu Copas
The HyperTexts