Retired Lt. Col. Braden Hisey remembers exactly what he was doing on Dec. 18, 2010.
That evening, Hisey was at the Washington, D.C., apartment of a friend who worked as a foreign service officer for the U.S. Department of State. They were both gay, and were watching the Senate vote to repeal the long-held policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which had prohibited the military from discriminating against LGBTQ service members — as long as they did not openly disclose their sexual orientation.
The repeal passed, 65-31. Hisey’s friend was elated, but “I was mute,” Hisey said.
“There I was, in a ‘safe’ place with a longtime friend who was also gay, and I was so repressed and psychologically tormented that I could not even confide in him or express support when the repeal passed,” Hisey said.
Adopted during the 1990s, “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” often short-handed as DADT, allowed for discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer service members if their behavior differed from heterosexual norms. The policy forced LGBTQ veterans like Hisey to hide in plain sight, or face being investigated and dishonorably discharged.
“Survival sometimes called for one to be the loudest denier to gays in the military,” said Hisey, whose time in the Marines saw him serve during the first Persian Gulf War and set foot in more than 50 countries. “Otherwise, the spotlight might settle on you.”
‘Whatever you can think of, I’ve been called’
Discrimination in the U.S. military has a long history. It wasn’t until 1948 that the armed forces officially abolished segregation on the basis of skin color, and women were not allowed to serve in combat roles until the 1980s.
Maxwell “Devie” Lynn, a Vietnam veteran who came out as gay in only recent years, remembered the pressure he felt during his six years of service.
“I’m 73 years old, so when I was growing up in eastern Oklahoma, you had to be really quiet,” Lynn said. “In Vietnam, you had to keep your mouth shut. I’ve been called so many things. Whatever you can think of, I’ve been called. A lot of how I dealt with it was making fun of myself before they could.”
Until he began attending LGBTQ support group sessions at the VA Healthcare System Authority in Oklahoma City, Lynn did not even openly call himself gay. He’d known the truth about his own orientation for decades, but had denied it for just as long, all from a place of fear.
“I’ve never been proud to be gay,” Lynn said. “I was just raised not to. I guess I’m more on what people would think is the ‘closeted’ side. I’ve never been ‘in the closet,’ though. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I was born outside of ‘the closet.’ You just went on your merry way and shut up.
“The first time I walked into the VA and saw a poster with rainbow dog tags on the door, I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was just something I had been taught to be ashamed of.”
Dishonorable discharge was the ultimate penalty
Lynn’s fears were not misplaced. A fellow veteran named Barbra Licano, who served in U.S. Navy during the 1970s and is transgender, said she had to be “totally in the closet.”
“If I were to come out back then, it would mean a dishonorable discharge,” Licano said. “Now I am open and out, and I am who I am, but when I was in active duty, I never dreamed of this kind of acceptance in the military.”
Lynn agreed, saying there was nothing worse than being kicked out of the service.
“To me, being dishonorably discharged was worse than even ‘being gay,’ at the time,” Lynn said. “I hated the idea of it. I worked my ass off in everything I did to prove myself and make sure I was accepted.”
Cornell Gallagher, a Black veteran who retired in 2006 and comes from a religious background, understood that feeling completely.
“I’ve been closeted for the most part of my life,” Gallagher said. “I knew having to go my entire military experience and deny publicly who I was — that was a huge level of stress. I felt I had to be the class clown or work myself extra hard, to the point I felt I was harming myself physically, just to fit in. But I felt I had to prove to everyone that I’m the same as everyone else. I’d hate for anybody to go through what I went through.”
13,000 troops discharged under ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’
Years separate the services of Lynn and Licano from Gallagher and Hisey, but the feelings of repression and emotional abuse are shared by all of them.
“There is so much value to be gained, individually and organizationally, if a person can bring their whole self to work,” said Hisey, who retired in 2014. “It is about sharing bits of your personal life with your colleagues, and they with you, that helps to build trust and camaraderie, which in turn benefits the organization. It took an enormous amount of psychological energy and compartmentalization to keep my walls up and still perform well.”
Things are different now. Lynn, Licano and Gallagher have all befriended each other through the VA’s LGBTQ support sessions, the Belong Group. Lynn has called Gallagher “a godsend,” and Gallagher and Hisey are each happily married with husbands of their own.
But this progress has come with a price. After the implementation of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, the U.S. military discharged more than 13,000 troops. Hundreds of LGBTQ service members continued to be discharged every year until the policy was repealed in 2011.
“DADT was hollow,” Hisey said. “Despite its intention to allow gays to serve, it did nothing to protect or keep gays in the military. On any given day, a military command was free to look into allegations of being gay. Notice that I did not say being in a homosexual relationship. It was criminal to simply be oneself.”
Benefits available to those discharged under previous policy
Department of Defense policies have shifted throughout the past decade. After the DADT repeal, the Department of Veteran Affairs began mandating medically necessary care for gay and transgender veterans, such as hormone therapy and mental health services.
Most recently, President Joe Biden announced in September that the VA would start providing benefits for LGBTQ troops who had received other-than-honorable discharges before and during the implementation of DADT.
The announcement was a praiseworthy change, according to Dr. Anna Craycraft, an LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator who often facilitates the Belong Group sessions. But it has not been without its challenges.
“This is the conundrum: Often the people who need the change in status aren’t connected to the VA, because they can’t be,” Craycraft said. “So how do we get to them and give them what they need?”
Kelly White, local recovery coordinator at the Oklahoma City VA, has been spearheading an Other-than-Honorable Discharge Initiative to address the issue.
“Opening up VA health care eligibility is super important, but there’s been a lot of changes,” White said. “Some barriers are misinformation out there, because things change so quickly. The trickling down of accurate information is another thing. But really the biggest barrier is the complexity, just to know and figure out how to do the update.”
Veterans affected by other-than-honorable discharges for their sexual orientation can apply for a discharge upgrade to honorable via mail or the Veterans Service Organization. A questionnaire to start the application process can be found on the VA’s official website at https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/.
“It can be frustrating to go through that process, and then just one little thing kicks it back,” White said. “That’s why we want as many of our veterans as we can to know that we’re here to help guide you through it. Word of mouth has been a huge deal, but it can be slow.”
‘Still quite a ways to go’
To some, progress is still slow. Hisey joined the Marines in 1988 out of a sense of adventure, and his career took him to Kuwait, Africa, Central America and Western Europe. But he said the mental gymnastics of having to be “exact and precise” with what he said and did were the most exhausting experiences to him.
During 2013, two years after the repeal of DADT and when same-sex marriage first became federally legal, Hisey married his husband in New York City. But even in that region of the country, where the Stonewall uprising of decades past had done so much for gay liberation, attitudes at his duty station were still slow to come around.
“Leaving my vehicle each morning before heading into the office building, I would remove my wedding ring,” Hisey said. “One time I forgot. Ultimately, being married to a man while being in the military, especially me as a lieutenant colonel and fairly high up the food chain, was too much strain. A few short months after getting married, I chose love.”
Even now, retired and living close to family and friends in Oklahoma, Hisey notices strange looks when he and his husband go out to eat at restaurants.
“The laws have changed, but the attitudes are still slow to come around,” Hisey said.
In 2017, former President Donald Trump had issued an executive order banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, but President Joe Biden repealed that ban earlier this year.
“Things are getting better, but there is still quite a ways to go, and discrimination remains,” Hisey said. “Bigotry sprouts from ignorance and the hatred of things different than yourself. The few transgender people I know have more personal courage than most people because they live their authentic lives no matter how other than ‘normal’ they might appear.
“At the end of the day, what really chafes me are the people who insist that others live their lives according to someone else’s mores and beliefs. What harm is it to a hetero(sexual), cisgender person if another person is gay or transgender? Any hetero distress is really nothing more than fear of the unknown.”
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