"And The Truth Shall Set You Free..."

So What’s It Like to Be a Gay Cadet at West Point These Days?
Four years after the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the academy is a hotbed of sweet indifference.

Vanity Fair
Dave Cullen
June 30, 2015

Sara Emsley always knew she wanted to join the U.S. Army, ever since she was a small child. “You can ask any of the kids I made go through an obstacle course at my sixth birthday party,” the West Point cadet recently said. She dressed up as soldier for Halloween for “many, many years,” and never paused to worry about whether the military would let a girl like her fight.

Then she hit adolescence and began to discover her sexuality. She didn’t like what she felt. Girls like that were forbidden from serving, so she denied her own urges. She couldn’t let them stand in the way of her dream.

Emsley first went to college at Virginia Tech, where she finally came out to herself and trusted others, but hid her sexuality from her peers in the college’s R.O.T.C. program. By then, the military had lifted its absurd “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but Emsley still felt it was too dangerous to say anything. Then the U.S. Military Academy at West Point accepted her. She expected to dive much deeper into the closet when she arrived last summer for basic training. “I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she said. “I received nothing but support or indifference.”

Funny how appealing “indifference” sounded. Such a surprisingly beautiful word. At first gays asked for tolerance, but what a degrading goal that was: Who the hell wants to be tolerated? Then we asked for acceptance, but maybe “indifference” would be best of all. It sounded that way when Emsley spoke about it this March at an official West Point ceremony I attended honoring gay cadets and Spectrum, the academy’s gay-straight alliance. Indifference. The ultimate goal, the cherished hazy objective gays hope for on some distant horizon has always been indifference. Where nobody gives a shit. You’re a lesbian? Cool—we won’t be interested in the same guys.

Emsley had reason to fear acceptance, especially in the military. Much of the nation celebrated the Supreme Court marriage-equality decision Friday, but large sectors were fuming. It’s easy to picture some of the most stubborn pockets of resistance. It’s easy to picture West Point right up there with an N.F.L. locker room.

When I enlisted in the infantry, in 1983, I didn’t meet a single gay guy—not even in the mirror. I was so insanely homophobic that I deceived even myself. Two guys in my platoon were accused of getting too close, and it was not pretty: no beatings, just ostracism and humiliation. And I was far too terrified to defend them.

Nearly 30 years later, with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” still in effect, a lieutenant colonel I’ve been following for my upcoming book on gay soldiers came home from Afghanistan. Despite worsening PTSD symptoms, he couldn’t see an army shrink for fear of outing himself and ending his career.

Since the repeal of “the policy,” however, I’ve marveled at the pace of change within the military. On three trips to the Pentagon and another to Guantánamo Bay with that lieutenant colonel, I could not find a soul who seemed to give a shit about his sexuality. But nothing prepared me for the West Point banquet this spring.

Inside a spacious hall with a panoramic view of a strategic bend in the Hudson River, about a hundred cadets, officers, and alumni in dress blues sat around tables set with the good china. Spectrum has two faculty and 40 cadet members, a mixture of gay, straight, bi, and undecided. Quite a few fall into that last category. One cadet at my table described himself as straight, but then later confided he had messed around with guys. Still working it out. Fair enough.

Awards were presented to leaders in the L.G.B.T. struggle, who gave stirring speeches, but they couldn’t compete with the cadets who took the lectern to relay their stories. Mac Sims, a sophomore, said he had hid his sexuality for a while when he arrived in 2013. The policy had ended, but he feared repercussions. Eventually, sensing the indifference, he took the plunge and never regretted it. “I come from Georgia and I was kind of projecting how people had treated me,” he said.

Sims expressed amazement at the change he’s witnessed in a single year. At last year’s Spectrum banquet, nearly every speaker talked about their struggles under “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said. This year, it was about the ease of acceptance—most cadets were never required to deceive. “That time is behind us,” he said.

Sims relayed a conversation he’d just had with a straight colonel who had lived through the policy. The colonel said he’d known of gays in his units over the years, but they always had to lie. This March, he had asked a cadet about his spring break plans, and the guy nonchalantly responded, “I’m going to Spain with my boyfriend.” Didn’t even pause to worry about it.

Professor Aaron Belkin accepted the Leadership Award for his pivotal role in overturning “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Belkin is the founding director of the Palm Center, a think tank dedicated to promoting acceptance of gays in the military. He gave the cadets a sense of just how far they had come. He described a decade of speeches at dozens of military bases, where one tiny moment on that very campus stood out. After he gave a speech at West Point around 2003, one cadet waited for everyone else to file out. Only when it was safe did the cadet approach Belkin to say, “Thank you for your work, sir.” Then he turned and left.

“That was the extent he felt safe communicating with me,” Belkin said.

There were plenty of happy L.G.B. cadets at the ceremony, but all the Ts were older. Transgenders are still banned from the U.S. military—or so the military thinks. The healthy showing of trans alumni proved that they have been serving in secret for years.

Activist Allyson Robinson, a 1994 graduate who served as an officer in the Air Defense Artillery before transitioning, stood up to accept the Courage Award, bestowed on individuals who “choose the harder right over the easier wrong.” (It’s a line paraphrased from the West Point Cadet Prayer—nice touch.) Robinson was accompanied by her wife and West Point classmate, Danyelle, with whom she has four children.

A research institute recently estimated that 15,500 transgender people are serving in the U.S. military right now. Defense Secretary Ash Carter raised eyebrows in February when he said he’s “open-minded” when it comes to lifting the ban on transgender soldiers. But a Pentagon spokesman later said there is no “specific review” under consideration to end the ban. Last week, Obama celebrated Gay Pride at the White House, and invited two active trans service members and four trans vets—a first.

At the West Point event, Professor Belkin said the Palm Center is now turning its attention to dismantling the intellectual underpinnings of the transgender ban. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was based on the myth that gays would destroy unit cohesion, so overturning it required convincing key generals otherwise, Belkin said. Now the center is hammering away at the notion that transgenders are somehow medically unfit. He said his team recently persuaded a former U.S. surgeon general to sign on to a study refuting the claim.

It sure felt welcoming at the banquet, but I had to wonder how gay-affirming it was outside the bubble of that hall. What was it like in the bars? I didn’t have to wait long. About half the attendees, and most of the cadets, headed straight to Patton’s Tavern, a bar right on campus. It was Saturday night, and the place was thumping.

Nobody seemed to notice when a herd of L.G.B.T.s descended. The beer flowed, the energy was high, and the conversation got racy. Soldiers making sex jokes, what a surprise. It was a smallish place, packed in close, and I could easily overhear conversations all around us. They could clearly hear us, clearly tell we were gay. And nobody cared. We drank for a couple hours, and I kept an eye on the crowds around us the whole time. No sign of revulsion, not even a raised eyebrow or curious stare. Complete indifference. It felt wonderful.