The year was 1993.  Clinton was President.  Gay, lesbian and bisexual people felt they finally had a friend in the White House.  And, even though transgender people officially started the gay movement at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, they only began finding their voices in the equal rights movement in the early 1990’s.  They had very little visibility and vertically no credibility.  We weren’t on anyone’s radar.

In that year, President Clinton wanted to fulfill a promise by making the US military safe for people, regardless of their sexual orientation, but it didn’t turn out the way people wanted.  The now infamous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law came into affect and it did not protect people in the military based on their sexual orientation, if that orientation was something other than straight.  The law gave commanders a chance to hunt down gay, lesbian and bisexual service member in order to weed them out.  Transgender military people didn’t ask to be included, but included they were.

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Shortly after that, a new LGB organization, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN,) formed for the express purpose of legally helping military personnel who have been targeted under DADT.  They did a great job and helped thousands, but, if a transgender person came to them, they could not help because they had no one who had any knowledge about their issue.  Yet, trans people were targeted because the military thought they were gay.

My first experience with dealing with SLDN was back in 1999 when Private Barry Winchell was murdered at Ft. Campbell, KY.  I just happen to catch a news story and when they showed Calpernia Addams, they called her Winchell’s “Drag Queen lover.”  Even before Calpernia had any surgeries, one could easily tell she was a transsexual woman.

I called the club where Calpernia worked, but she had to call me back later.  In our conversation, it came to light that the SLDN leaders at that time wanted to portray her as a “gay man” so they could push the problems with DADT.  She told me that Barry was attracted to her femininity and not anything else about her.  Barry Winchell was killed because he was dating a trans woman, BUT that somehow made him “gay” in the eyes of the other soldiers and in the eyes of SLDN back then.

In January 2003, the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) was formed to address the problems facing transgender veterans in the VA, but to also do what we could to help transgender service members who had problems while serving.  We quickly came out saying that we opposed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to show our support for our gay, lesbian and bisexual brothers and sisters in arms.  We had also heard stories of trans people being targeted under the law, so opposing it made sense as far as our mission was concerned.

After a short time, TAVA started getting requests to provide legal help because some trans services members were being targeted under DADT.  The new people in charge of SLDN were more supportive, but pointed out that they still had no person in their ranks to take on this issue, even though these trans service members were accused of being gay.  Later that changed when SLDN hired a transgender lawyer who not only began helping trans service members, but educated SLDN on the issues.

As time went on, the reasons for DADT lost all of their logic.  Prominent high-ranking military people publicly came out opposing it, while polls showed Americans overwhelmingly supported its repeal.  All of Europe allowed their LGB people to serve openly and even some allowed trans people to serve openly.  The days of DADA were numbered.

SLDN saw that the conversation about DADA had ramped up tremendously and a new law was about to be introduced, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (MREA) that was designed to repeal DADT.  The law only had the words “sexual orientation” because that was the only words DADT used.  SLDN realized they needed to speak to the transgender community to ensure them that the way the law was written was specifically to repeal DADT and not to exclude transgender people on purpose.  Adding the words “gender expression and gender identity” into MREA made no sense and would confuse Congress people.

In 2006, SLDN, TAVA and National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) had a conversation about this very issue.  SLDN didn’t want to get angry calls and E-mails from transgender people when MREA was introduced and it only had the words “sexual orientation” in it.  They wanted us to assure transgender people that the reason we were not mentioned in MREA was because DADT had nothing to do with “gender identity or gender expression.”

In theory, they were correct about this, but in practice, the military continued targeting transgender people for being gay.  In that meeting, I agreed to go along with SLDN’s strategy, as did NCTE, because their logic was that if passed, MREA would help transgender people as well.  The one person in the meeting who didn’t want us to go along with this was TAVA’s Vice President, Angela Brightfeather.  She felt something was wrong but couldn’t put her finger on it.  She, like the rest of us, knew transgender people had been targeted under DADT, but we had no proof.

All of SLDN’s Action Alerts and press releases stated that “gay, lesbian and bisexual service members are being adversely affected by DADT.”  They knew that transgender service members were being affected.  TAVA knew it, too, but we kept our mouths shut so as not to rock the boat.  Little did we know what the future held for us.

Fast forward to 2008 and TAVA began their Transgender Veterans Survey that lasted until May 1, 2008.  The raw data from the survey made it absolutely clear that transgender people were being targeted just as much as LGB service members, with trans men being questioned about their sexual orientation at twice the rate as trans women.  At that point, TAVA’s stance changed on inclusion in MREA.

When Memorial Day came up, several people wrote articles on how much DADT has hurt our country’s readiness by discharging many critical people needed in a time of war.  The Department of Defense raised the age limit to the middle 40s.  Criminals of all kinds were allowed to serve.  People who could not get along socially and those with low aptitude scores were accepted, as long as they were straight.  All the articles kept saying, DADT affects gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.  I don’t know how many times I responded to these articles using the data from the survey, but no one listened.

That all changed when the most prestigious institution in the country, The Palm Center, published the White Paper Report on the Transgender Veterans Survey.  They lent credibility to our claims that transgender people can no longer be left out of the DADT discussion.

Here’s what The Palm Center wrote in the “Research Implications and Recommendations” section at the end of the White Paper Report:

“Survey responses make clear that transgender service members are negatively affected by the current DADT policy, even though the policy does not directly apply to them.  Transgender and other service members expressing non-traditional gender identities are often perceived as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, thus increasing the likelihood that they will be investigated under DADT.  DADT targets these service members regardless of their actual sexual orientation.”

So, what happens next?  SLDN is faced with a situation on continuing to show its support for transgender service members without damaging the integrity of MREA.  The TAVA survey has been read by Congress people already, so it is no longer a secret.  SLDN may start getting tough questions about transgender service members, which was not TAVA’s intention.

We know there are solutions to help them in answering these questions and TAVA is ready to sit down and talk with them to work out those solutions.  I am sure that conversation will be happening very soon, when the DNC Convention hoopla has calmed down.  What ideas TAVA has is not for this article.  When we have made a coordinated decision with SLDN on how to approach this new issue, everyone else will know.  We want to take a unified direction that will help all service members and not hurt any of them.

I just received an “Action Alert” from the Servicesmembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) asking me and others to send a letter to our local newspapers and the national newspapers on stating the need to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) supports this repeal and has since Day One of our existence.  We knew back then that transgender people were being kicked out under DADT, but did not have the proof until this year with the survey we did.

I included the Action Alert SLDN sent me after my comments.  When you click onto their link, it takes you to a place where you fill out various pieces of information and it then sends you to a pre-written letter to send off to those newspapers.  You can change the words in the letter.  If you read down in the letter, you will see near the end it says, “gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.” When I saw that, I added the word “transgender” in that list and sent it out with that minor change.  Afterwards, I sent a response to Aubrey Sarvis at SLDN telling him what I did.

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I am respectfully requesting transgender people, whether you served in the military or not, to do something similar, then send Aubrey Sarvis an E-mail telling him what you had done.  You can do as simple as I did and just add the word “transgender” to the letter, or you can write a completely new letter.  You can do what Angela Brightfeather, TAVA’s VP is doing and send SLDN an E-mail stating why you will not participate in this effort until they add us in this process.  The survey backs us up and we will no longer be silent about being left out.  We didn’t ask the Department of Defense to investigate us and discharge us under DADT, but they did.  Now, both the DoD and SLDN need to hear our voices.

We are not taking this stance without a plan on how SLDN can include us and what they can say to make this addition seamless.  All they have to do is sit down and talk with us about it.

Here’s what they sent me.  Aubrey Sarvis’s E-mail address is at the bottom.

*****************************

Dear Monica,

Something amazing happened at the Democratic National Convention this week.

For the first time since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was implemented, a major political party adopted a platform that calls for the replacement of the law with a non-discrimination policy.

The press has largely ignored this historic accomplishment, instead focusing on the big-name speakers and fancy parties. But this moment is too important for the press to ignore.

Please write a short letter to your local newspaper, telling them about the big news:

http://action.sldn.org/page/speakout/CoverthePlatform

With last month’s compelling Congressional hearing, resounding public support in a Washington Post poll, and now this platform victory, the momentum to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is clearly on our side.

We hope the Republican Party will follow in the Democrats’ footsteps and support a similar position in its platform next week.

This the first year that repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been called for in a major party platform — and with your help to repeal the law, it can be the last time it needs to be.

We can’t let this moment go by unnoticed. Use our simple tool to write a letter to your local newspaper, letting them know why the platform position is so important to you:

http://action.sldn.org/page/speakout/CoverthePlatform

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Aubrey Sarvis

Executive Director

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

sldn@sldn.org

(Note: Also posted on PFLAG’s blog.)

For years, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been the official witch-hunt policy that gave the US military open-ended permission to ruin the careers of any person they suspect were “homosexuals.” It never had anything to do with whether the person actually acted upon their sexual orientation, or even if the person was really gay or not. It mostly stems from the Department of Defense’s archaic and narrow view of what they think should be gender-normative behavior for men and women, including sexual activities. Basically, you don’t have to be gay, or act gay, or be sexually active with a same-sex partner, as long as they think you’re gay. They hold all the cards.

It’s the famous oxymoron of “Military Intelligence” in play here. This is why transgender-identifying service members also find themselves snared in the DADT trolling nets that commanding officers like to throw out every so often. Maybe they have to “catch their limit” to get promoted. Who knows? But, we do know for sure that transgender service members need to be factored into the DADT mix when the discussion comes up.

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Over 12,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual service men and women have been discharged under DADT. We may never know how many of those discharged were really transgender-identified people. We also don’t know how many transgender people who were discharged under DADT that did not get counted in the above number. We do know that some have been sent packing and DADT was the excuse the military used.

We have recently heard the words “gender non-conforming” in the DADT discussions. This should not be used as an absolute definition to describe transgender service members. Gender non-conforming indicates that the person acts or expresses themselves in a manner not stereotypical to their birth gender. This means a male who exhibits some stereotypical expressions or mannerisms of females, or visa versa.

A person does not have to be trans to appear gender non-conforming. In many cases, transgender people will exhibit hyper-masculinity or femininity to mask how they really identify. In this case, it would be better if we let the military person self-identify themselves as being transgender rather then saying that those who do not conform to stereotypical mannerisms are also transgender-identified.

In a recent article by Steve Ralls called, “Turning Point for Troops & Their Families,” he mentioned some survey statistics that come from my recent article called, “Transgender Military People and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” posted on June 25, 2008. I will repost those figures and elaborate on them.

“One of the questions we asked was, ‘Did anyone ever suspect you were gay or asked if you were gay’? Out of the 801 people who answered that question, 302 said, ‘Yes’. We also asked, ‘Have you ever been questioned by your commanding officer or any other officer because someone said they thought you were gay’? 799 people answered that question and 109 of them said ‘Yes’. It seems that by these questions, transgender people are very much at risk for being targeted for being discharged under DADT.”

The figures come from the raw data of the Transgender American Veterans Association’s Transgender Veterans Survey, conducted from 12/13/07 to 5/1/0/8. From the time the survey ended, until today, the Palm Center in California has been helping to provide the appropriate people to analyze the results and to help in putting together the final report, which should be out sometimes next week at the earliest.

It is very important to note that even though the figures look impressive, we have to adjust them for those who actually served since DADT went into affect. Over the years before DADT, others have also been asked if they were gay. Making those adjustments, we see that 237 people who took our survey spent either all or part of their military service from July 1993 to today. Out of those, 95 answered “Yes” to the question, “Did anyone ever suspect you were gay or asked if you were gay?” On the other one, “Have you ever been questioned by your commanding officer or any other officer because someone said they thought you were gay,” 34 of them said “Yes” to that.

All of this shows that transgender-identified service members have always been asked about being gay. It goes back to what I said in my other article:

“The military cannot distinguish between sexual orientation and gender identity. As far as they are concern, if a male likes to wear women’s clothes or a woman wants to change her sex, then those people are gay. They don’t know any better and most refuse to be educated about it.”

Plane and simple, we are equally at risk. There maybe far less of us and we may not have added to the overall total by that much, but we can no longer be ignored in this discussion. The mindset has always been that since the law was written to cover sexual orientation only, then we would confuse people by including transgender people. My question has become, “How can we confuse people who already think transgender people are just gay?” Regardless of what our sexual orientation really is, we have been targeted and kicked out for being gay.

I say we just let them go on thinking we are gay. It means our numbers are included in the total, our people’s stories are told and our voices are heard in this fight. Whenever DADT is mentioned or written about, I would love to see people start saying, “This law affects gay, lesbian, bisexual AND transgender service members.” This was one fight we didn’t asked to be included in, but it appears we didn’t have a choice. If they want to throw us into the mix, then they better be prepared to hear us on the Hill. We will be there, proudly standing beside our LGB brothers and sisters.

Guest Blogger Dixon Osborn (Cross posting from The Bilerico Project)

Dixon Osburn is Co-founder and former Executive Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

The Palm Center at the University of California Santa Barbara this week published a new report by a “study group” of four flag officers calling for repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In issuing the report, the four flag officers have joined five dozen other generals and admirals that have called for repeal. The growing chorus for repeal from the highest ranks of our armed forces should be cause for celebration.

The report’s findings are indeed groundbreaking. For the first time ever, four flag officers have reviewed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in some depth and, according to the Palm Center, found that the law “prevents some gay troops from performing their duties, that gays already serve openly, that tolerance of homosexuality in the military has grown dramatically, and that lifting the ban is ‘unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion.’”

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Despite the significant and good findings, the Palm Center’s Study Group report, makes several recommendations, without analysis, that are as bad as the cure, and may significantly undermine efforts to achieve full equality under law. The Palm Center commissioned the report, and the flag officers agreed to participate on the condition that the Palm Center not influence the analysis or recommendations. It just goes to show you have to be careful what you ask for.

The Palm Center Study Group report’s first and primary recommendation is that “Congress should repeal [Don't Ask, Don't Tell] and return authority for personnel policy under this law to the Department of Defense.”

Aubrey Sarvis of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) rightly told The Washington Blade that Congress should adopt the Military Readiness Enhancement Act which would not only repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but codify a law of nondiscrimination to protect lesbian, gay and bisexual service members.

By returning authority to regulate gays to the Pentagon, the Palm Center Study Group proposal allows the Pentagon to reinstitute a regulatory ban on gays in place of the law, just as it had done from World War II to 1993. The authors prefer that the military regain authority to regulate personnel matters in this area, but there is no guarantee that we would like the result coming out of the Pentagon. Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace recently called gays “immoral.” I doubt he would be leading the charge for equality. The Palm Center’s Study Group report banks on a precarious hope that the military will do the right thing.

The report’s recommendation also means that the fate of gays in the military can change at the whim of each new Administration or Secretary of Defense. During one term, gays may be welcomed, only to be banned by the next leader. In the past, we have seen the military send openly gay troops to the Persian Gulf only to discharge them when they returned home. We have seen past gay bans that have given commanders discretion to retain or dismiss gay troops, leading to arbitrary results. Our LGBT service members deserve the peace of mind that law protects them from whim, discomfort and prejudice.

The Palm Center Study Group’s second recommendation is that “the Department of Defense should…[maintain] current authority under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and service regulations to preclude misconduct prejudicial to good order and discipline and unit cohesion.” The recommendation leaves intact Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which criminally punishes service members, regardless of sexual orientation, for consensual sodomy. Returning the authority to the Pentagon to regulate gay service members, leaves open the door that it could impose regulations that would administratively separate gay service members for sexual conduct.

There are other portions of the Study Group’s recommendations that are troubling.

One section prohibits acts committed for the purpose of “satisfying sexual desires” which mirrors language in the current regulations implementing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Yet, today, the Pentagon defines such prohibited conduct to include handholding and pats on the back. Another section recommends prohibiting sexual conduct “prejudicial to good order and discipline and unit cohesion.” Some military courts have defined any same gender sexual conduct as “prejudicial to good order and discipline and unit cohesion.” One should be very concerned by the use of the same language here.

Another section states that “telling” should be allowed, but considered a “personal and private” matter. It is not clear whether “public telling” is prohibited, or exactly what that means. The current implementing regulations to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell use similar language, calling sexual orientation a “personal and private matter.” Under current law, however, “personal and private” means “absolute secrecy.” A violation of absolute secrecy results in discharge. The use of the words “private and personal” was a sleight of hand used by the drafters of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to make the discrimination sound more palatable. Again, one should be deeply troubled by the use of similar language here.

The Study Group’s recommendations are not only problematic in substance, but politically. There are now two recommendations in the public domain for Congress to consider – the Military Readiness Enhancement Act which repeals Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and implements a law of nondiscrimination and this, which does not.

I appreciate that the Palm Center avows that it had no say in the final recommendations. It is an academic research institution, even though its research is singularly focused on repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. One can only hope that leading advocates for full equality will be able to argue that the report published under the Center’s banner does not reflect the opinion of the experts on the issue.

Some might argue that the Study Group’s recommendations reflect a more realistic compromise. More Members of Congress (and military leaders) might be willing to support repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell only if there is no further legislation and the issue returns to the Pentagon for further deliberation. We are not at that point, however.

The Military Readiness Enhancement Act has been introduced in Congress only twice, and it has more co-sponsors this session than last. Members on the House Armed Services Committee have promised the first hearings on gays in the military since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – a significant milestone. Political experts predict that the Democrats will substantially increase their majorities in the House and Senate in November, and with that possibly produce a majority solidly in favor of repeal. Senator Obama has stated he supports the Military Readiness Enhancement Act and would sign it into law if Congress passed it and he were President. Why would anyone suggest that we compromise now?

There are good parts to the Palm Center’s report. I welcome the fact that four new flag officers support repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The findings and analysis are compelling. The recommendations flowing from the report, however, have the potential to set fourteen years of progress on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back on its heels. Those who support full equality will have their work cut out to undo the damage.