God, Glory, and Gayness?

This has been a long time coming and I apologize for the wait.
"Could this guy be gayer?" Not only is that how I started out the last blog, but that is exactly the question I asked myself upon my first day in a new unit I was in over 6 years ago. The answer to that is not as important as how that question was the harbinger of personal growth and courage in my life. (But in case you're curious I believe the answer is, "No way!" He ended up being the stereotypical gay guy that could be referenced by every person who has ever generalized gays.


I'll refer to this first day in the new unit as X-Day.

X-Day; First Contact.
I was standing in the back of a 300 person Army formation. As I stood there taking in the scene I noticed a soldier at the front of the formation that wasn't standing there stoically like the rest of us. He was hopping and bouncing and giggling and singing. He was also energetically speaking with his peers standing around him. He would warmly touch their shoulders out of seemingly earnest affection, and he would hold his wrists limply, effeminately...like a gay guy would. This made me somewhat uncomfortable. More than that, however, it shocked me. Here this guy was; obviously gay; and nobody was doing anything about it. Not only were they not doing anything about it, but they seemed to generally like this guy...this gay guy who wasn't supposed to be there.

Of course I wasn't savvy to all of the nuances of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy but I did know that a soldier wasn't supposed to be openly gay. This guy, in my opinion, was breaking the rules. Thankfully this guy was not in my class at the school we were attending so the likelihood of the two of us being paired up slim, and thank God he would never be my roommate. Therefore, I could keep this guy, and the group of sinners he was the poster child for at arms distance because our paths were unlikely to cross. No fear; all would be well and my bubble would remain intact.

X-Day + 5 months; Moving Day.
I had been in the unit for 5 months and it was time to “move up”. Up the hill, up in status, and up in quality of life. After so long in the unit, as the time waned long and vacancies in the nicer, newer barracks opened up as the more senior soldiers moved out, everyone got an opportunity to move "up the hill." My time had come; life was going to be good. Immediately after class on moving day I loaded up my F-150 pick-up truck moved everything over to the new barracks. Although I had a roommate he was not in there at the time. After I had been arranging my room for a while I realized I was hungry and it was time to eat.

When I came back with my Styrofoam container I was in for a shock. The lights were on, music was coming from the other side of the room but I couldn't see my roommate. He was around a barricade of wall lockers and dressers that had been erected to give the allusion of privacy. I went around the corner excited to greet my new roommate and I must have visibly reacted because the "gay poster boy" from X-Day looked really unhappy to see me too. It should be clarified that by this point my roommate had "come out" and was in the middle of being processed out of the Army.

I was almost in a panic for the next several hours before bed time. In my mind I ran through a list of "safety precautions" I was going to have to take from then on. No longer was it communal showers where somebody could come by and disrupt any devious plans my gay roommate might have contrived to inflict upon me. It was a private shower for just our room. If anything was going to happen it was going to be while I was naked in restroom taking a shower. I thought surely that was where he would jump me one time when I had my guard down. Thankfully there were locks on the doors. (Rule #1: Always keep the bathroom door locked...ALWAYS!)
"But what else?" I thought. Well surely the first line of attack would be a psychological one. If I had him in one thing it was sheer size and strength. I was a 6'4" +200lbs country kid from Nebraska, this guy was 5'9" 145lbs tops. So I had to be on my guard from the sort of "conversion" techniques that I knew his people used. (Rule #2: No gay talk. No talking about gay lifestyles or gay conduct in a nonchalant way).

We began to talk. Of course I was extremely stand-offish at first but I began to realize that he was not at all pushing the issue. He wasn't trying to make himself seem more acceptable, he certainly never looked at me in a way I could perceive as "attracted" to me or "sexual," and the dreaded “rear flank” in the bathroom never came, even when I forgot to observe rule #1. Really the only thing that bothered me (and perhaps this was a form of psychological warfare) was his incessant need to listen to Cher, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston.

From time to time he had brought in some of his friends that were gay. At first this made me really uncomfortable, but again, he never went out of his way to justify what he did. He just accepted himself and he didn't care whether I accepted him or not. EVENTUALLY I broached the subject of him being gay. This was scary territory for me. I knew, I mean to tell ya’ I KNEW, that here is where I had to be on guard because he would try to justify his "choice" to be gay. At first we'd talk generally about him being gay and being in the Army and getting kicked out because of, what I thought was, his "choice" to be gay.

One time I thought I'd pin him down in conversation. I thought maybe I'd be a little more probing and find a chink in his stylish, bedazzled, pink armor with matching Gucci gloves and his pink Louis Vuitton saddle bags. I asked him rather circuitously if he chose to be gay or if he was just born gay. His answer, I thought, was typical and expected. I knew the real answer was that he chose to be gay, but he told me that he did not make that choice. Dubiously I asked him why he thought he was gay. His answer was, sadly, that he had been abused as a child. Here I began to come untied from my self-righteous moorings. Finally I asked him, knowing that this one would be hard to lie about, whether he would have chosen to be gay if he would have had a choice. Here I thought he might try to appear thoughtful for a few moments before he answered, "Yes, I would choose to be gay." But he did not. Without hesitation or pause he answered a firm, "No, I'd never choose to be gay. It has made my life so hard." This sent me reeling.

That answer, over time, had such a manifold effect on my beliefs about gays, right and wrong, and what constituted a good soldier, a good American, or even a good person. While my roommate was indeed a stylish person in touch with what "looked good" and he was very confident and accepting of his sexuality, in a very heartfelt way he distanced himself from any ability to choose his sexuality. While he respected and accepted himself, to him it wasn't worth the cost. He would have respected and accepted himself just the same, but would have enjoyed life more if he would have been straight.

No longer was being gay something that sinners out of touch with right and wrong chose to do in my mind. No longer was it incompatible with forming warm, friendly, respectful, and (hold on to your hats) honest relationships. This was something that was fundamentally different from anything I had ever experienced, went fundamentally against everything I had ever been taught, but simultaneously what I had been taught discredited itself before my very eyes. Here was this guy that came to be a friend of mine; somebody I could talk to about all sorts of things in a very open way; in turn he could turn to me if he needed help. Never did I begin to have gay tendencies. No longer was this a contagious thing to me. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with gays and the concept of homosexuality, but I was a huge step forward. I was tolerant. I was accepting. I was mentally stronger. I was aware of the people around me in ways I had never been before…

…I had become more American and more patriotic because I had the opportunity to serve side-by-side with gay soldiers.