Books

Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out, 2007
Steve Estes, Author
Book on Amazon, Book on Google Books

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was the directive of President Clinton’s 1993 military policy regarding gay and lesbian soldiers. This volume recovers the lost voices of those who served in silence, offering a rich chronicle of the history of gay and lesbian service in the U.S. military from World War II to the Iraq War. Drawing on more than 50 interviews with gay and lesbian veterans, Estes charts the evolution of policy toward homosexuals in the military over the past 65 years, uncovering the ways that silence about sexuality and military service has affected the identities of gay veterans. Far from undermining national security, unit cohesion, or troop morale, Estes demonstrates, these veterans strengthened the U.S. military in times of war and peace. He also examines challenges to the ban on homosexual service, placing them in the context of the wider movement for gay rights and gay liberation.

Here’s What We’ll Say, 2006
Reichen Lehmkuhl, Author
www.thereichen.com/HeresWhatWellSay

Here’s What We’ll Say tells the harrowing inside story of what happens when cadets who are committed to serving their nation’s military figure out that they are in fact gay. With no way out and no place to turn for protection, a new code of conduct emerged among gay and lesbian cadets that helped ensure their safety. Gathering secretly in various locations, cadets formed a hidden network. To guarantee the privacy of individuals in attendance, however, each meeting opened with, “Here’s what we’ll say…” — a pledge so sacred that the group had it inscribed on the inside of their class rings.

Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military, 2005
Zsa Zsa Gershick, Author
Book on Amazon

Through interviews with active duty, reserve, and retired soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, “Secret Service” underscores what people in uniform at both the highest and lowest echelons already know: Lesbians (and gay men) serve and have served proudly and well in all branches of the American armed forces (and openly in the militaries of many of our allies). These women – nurses, clerks, commanders, mechanics and artillerymen – are part of an extraordinary community of dedicated professionals whose commitment extends above and beyond. They are smart. They are skilled. They are lesbian. That fact alone – more than a decade after the start of “don’t ask, don’t tell” – still means discharge. And the pricetag of prejudice? Conservatively, more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the last decade alone, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Secret Service” was featured on C-SPAN’s “Book TV,” was an NPR 2005 Summer Reading Pick, and is a 2005 finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Best Gay & Lesbian Book of the Year Award.

Major Conflict: One Gay Man’s Life in the Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell Military, 2005
Jeffrey McGowan, Author
Book on Amazon, Book on Google Books

A Desert Storm veteran looks back on the years he sacrificed his identity to his career. Growing up in Queens, McGowan always wanted to be a soldier, but he “couldn’t be gay because soldiers aren’t gay.” That rationale tortured him as he enrolled in Fordham University’s ROTC program and felt agonizing longing for Greg, a co-worker at a bookstore. When McGowan joined the army in the late 1980s, “the military was like a college football player, pumped up and ripped on steroids, ” and he had “somehow managed to stuff the genie that Greg had nearly succeeded in freeing forcefully back into the proverbial bottle of my own denial.” (This genie should get overtime for all its play in this memoir.) McGowan served first in Germany; during Desert Storm, he tried to sublimate his crush on a gorgeous fellow officer. But the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy created an inadvertent pogrom, he says, as sexual conservatives in the service played dirty to smoke out the hidden “perverts.” Though McGowan was not implicated, the double-dealing and cowardice of others sickened him, and he retired in 1998. McGowan is not always a graceful writer (”the only anecdote [sic],” he tells us, “for this strain of senseless tragedy that so often infects the world, is love, family”), but his style is familiar and easy, as if he’s confiding his experiences to a trusted friend.

Guilty As Charged: The True Story of a Gay Beret, 2001
Jay Hatheway, Author
Book on Amazon

Guilty as Charged focuses on the author Jay Hatheway and his time spent in the Special Forces from 1971-1976, and the discrimination he encountered during that time. What makes this autobiography so interesting is the fact that Hatheway never denies to the reader that he has engaged in homosexual activities. Instead, the focus here is on trumped up charges brought against him. A strict policy in the military dictates that if someone so much as accuses you of committing homosexual acts, you’re considered guilty until proven innocent. Through the course of the book, we’re introduced to Hatheway and his life from a poor student at a military school through his rise in ranks in the military. Just as he’s within literally days of retiring, false charges are brought against him that state he has engaged in homosexual acts with a man of lesser rank. Fraternizing with your subordinates is one problem when you’re an officer, but sex between men is considered an even worse crime.

Don’t: A Readers Guide to the Military’s Anti-Gay Policy, 1999
Janet E. Halley, Author
Book on Amazon, Book on Google Books

In Don’t Janet E. Halley explains how the military’s new anti-gay policy is fundamentally misdescribed by its common nickname, “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.” This ubiquitous phrase, she points out, implies that it discharges servicemembers not for who they are, but for what they do. It insinuates that, as long as military personnel keep quiet about their homosexual orientation and desist from “homosexual conduct,” no one will try to pry them out of their closets and all will be well. “This is a dense, thought-provoking little book, certainly worth looking at for anyone interested in the legal and political aspects of the issue of gays in the military. Ultimately, her analysis suggests, political and intellectual bad faith have resulted in an unconstitutional policy that exposes all military personnel (not just homosexuals) to intense sexual scrutiny and restricts both their speech and acts.” (-Julia Riches)

My Navy Too, 1998
Beth F. Coye, Author
Book on Amazon

My Navy Too, the story of one woman’s career in the U.S. Navy, is painted against a backdrop of the drama of the nineteen sixties and seventies — the Vietnam War, the women’s movement, and the confusion of the Cold War, and later, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy debate. While Vietnam runs its tragic course, Tucker Fairfield fights within the navy for women’s rights and equality against her most implacable foe, “Big Daddy Navy.” Tucker’s communications with her mentor and friends and journal reveal a complex amalgam of human interactions and conflicts yet to be resolved within today’s society.

Serving In Silence, 1995
Margarethe Cammermeyer, Author
Book on Amazon

In 1989, during a routine interview for top-secret security clearance, U.S Army Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer revealed that she was a lesbian-and began an ordeal that continues to this day. Despite her distinguished twenty-six-year military career, she was discharged from the U.S. Army. Her dismissal has garnered intense media coverage and stirred debate all the way to the presidency. In this revealing autobiography Cammermeyer writes of her decision to challenge the official policy on homosexuals in the military and of her recent victory in Federal District Court. But much more than a book laws and politics, Serving in Silence is about coming of age, being a mother, and finding one’s center; about “coming out,” the daily horrors of nursing in Vietnam, and a female soldier’s brave life.

For You, Lili Marlene, 1995
Robert Peters, Author
Book on Amazon

The author recalls his search for self-knowledge and sexual identity as a young draftee in WWII. A gentle lad who grew up in a sheltered farm environment, he had to learn how to cope with emerging homosexual feelings while dealing with the supermacho culture of the barracks. He was assigned to the European theater of operations as a clerk, and his only combat experience was his own inner wrestling with sexual fantasies involving both genders. Wondering if God were somehow testing him, he refrained from homosexual relations despite the pressure from fellow GIs who flirted with him. On leave in Paris, he shared a female prostitute with a sergeant he secretly desired and later drifted into an awkward affair with a German woman while on occupation duty near Heidelberg. The highlight of his European hitch was his attendance at one of Marlene Dietrich’s more memorable concerts

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military, 1993
Randy Shilts, Author
Book on Amazon, Book on Google Books

The definitive book on the contentious issue of lesbians and gays in the military Conduct Unbecoming is a unique exploration of gays in the military and gay persecution in the military. As he did in And the Band Played On, his documentary history of the AIDS epidemic, Randy Shilts takes issues and histories with an epic scope and renders them into readable, understandable narratives. For Conduct Unbecoming, Shilts spoke with hundreds of lesbians and gays in all levels of the military and pored over thousands of documents in order to tell their stories of pain and pride. With critical attention to detail and profound depth of feeling, Conduct Unbecoming will leave readers moved and educated with a better understanding of this pressing situation in our nation’s military.

My Country, My Right to Serve: Experiences of Gay Men and Women in the Military, 1991
Mary Ann Humphrey, Author
Book on Amazon

“My Country, My Right to Serve: Experiences of Gay Men and Women in the Military, World War II to the Present” is compiled and with a preface by Mary Ann Humphrey. Humphrey, a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve who was forced to resign her commission for being gay, explains the origin of this book in her preface. The book is a collection of oral histories of lesbian and gay male veterans whose service spans from World War II to the final years of the Cold War era. The veterans in this book are a diverse group: women and men; Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps; active duty, National Guard, and Reserve; officer and enlisted; and of various ethnic backgrounds. They represent a wide range of military jobs: WW2 infantryman, Navy electronics officer, Army court reporter in Vietnam, combat medic, drill sergeant, pilot, recruiter, and more. Besides Humphrey, a total of 42 veterans are featured; some use pseudonyms. Each featured veteran tells his or her story in the first person. This is a fascinating collection of voices.