Author Rich Merritt’s mantra is, “Our secrets keep us sick.” He first put it in action when he laid his life out on the page with his 2005 autobiography, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. The memoir detailed Merritt’s formative years, including a strict and ultra traditionalist upbringing, along with attending the conservative private Protestant Fundamentalist school, Bob Jones University.

Merritt led a sheltered life, and hid the fact he was gay, refusing to admit it to even himself until he acted on his same-sex attraction in his mid-twenties.

In the years that followed, Merritt enlisted in and began an eight-year tour of duty in the United States Marine Corps, in which he lived a double life – as a closeted gay man serving as a USMC captain.

During the raucous surrounding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Merritt was doing extracurricular film work, appearing in gay porn films for All Worlds Video in San Diego.

After an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps in 1998, Merritt attended law school at the University of Southern California. Prior to leaving the military, it was discovered that Merritt was one of the subjects in a New York Times Magazine story (and was also featured anonymously on the magazine’s cover), which detailed the lives of the gay men and women who served under then President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Merritt was not, however, prosecuted or discharged for participating in the story.

But, he did face fire for not disclosing his work in porn in interviews he did with The Advocate and the Los Angeles Times. Subsequently, The Advocate outed Merritt on its cover as “The Marine Who Did Gay Porn.”

Other media outlets soon picked up the story. The aftermath, coupled with the extraneous effort of having kept his secrets for so long, drove Merritt to seek solace in party drugs.

Merritt, like any good soldier, fought the battle against drugs and won, and eventually became a lawyer.

When Merritt finally put pen to paper, shared his secrets, and was candid about all aspects of his life, he was more naked than he had ever been on film, he said to the Gay & Lesbian Times.

“The thing about it was I had kept so many secrets for so long, it was liberating to not have any secrets anymore,” Merritt said. “That was what I felt the most at the time – ‘I’m not going to have to worry.’ I was so scared all the time. It’s like in the Marines –- that they were going to find out that I was gay, and that at my law firm they were going to find out I’d done the pornos. Finally I said, ‘Guess what? I don’t have any secrets anymore.’ And that’s a very good feeling.

“I don’t have any regrets. I needed to write that book when I wrote it, and if I wrote it today, it would be a very different book. But, it was what I needed to write at the time, and it was part of getting past a hurdle in my life, and it was a vital part of that.”

The hurdles kept coming. Prior to the publication of his book, Merritt was fired from his law firm, Powell Goldstein in Atlanta.

“Three months before the book came out in 2005, I told my employer about it, and they fired me. I did find out later that within the firm they regretted that decision.”

Overall, though, he received positive responses to the book, which he penned with the hope that it would help others.

“I would say about 95 percent of the response that came to me was positive,” he said. “I received a few nasty e-mails, and if you go to Amazon.com, there’s a few nasty reviews. But, other than that, I don’t know of anything negative. What came to me was overwhelmingly positive.”

He was particularly pleased by a former-fundamentalist faction of the book’s readers.

“What happened was the book still found a huge audience among gay people who grew up as fundamentalists – that really resonated with people the most, at least the people who felt compelled to contact me,” he said.

In the book, Merritt detailed with pinpoint accuracy what it is like to serve under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It has since become an issue close to his heart. Musing on the upcoming election and DADT, Merritt said the policy has not been addressed by Republican presidential candidates.

“I feel like the Democrats have [addressed it], the Republicans certainly have not,” he said. “I feel this is one easy way that – God forbid, a Republican wins next year – it would be an easy way for a Republican to show they really are compassionate, like they try to say they are.

“Because the public, the majority of people – from 58 to 60 percent of the population now believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the military. Fifteen years ago, it was just the opposite, only 40 percent were in favor of it. And politicians all say that they don’t follow polls – well, they all lie, because they do.”

Merritt’s latest work, Code of Conduct, which is set in San Diego, delves into a fictional version of time served during the early years of DADT.

Industry reviews are applauding the author’s ability to showcase how “the policy destroys the cohesion and the morale more than homosexuality.”

Code of Conduct is the tale of main character Don Hawkins, “the unofficial leader of a group of gay service members, all compelled to guard their sexual identity as faithfully as they serve their country.” Merritt used his own real-life military experiences as a blueprint for his novel.

“Some of the scenarios are very similar, and people who have read both the memoir and the novel will see the similarities,” he said. “A lot of what I did with the novel was I took things that really happened to me, and then created maybe the way I wished it would have gone.

“These Marines in the book, some people who have read it are surprised at how open they are – like they go to gay bars. But, that’s the way I remember living in San Diego in ’93. We were very closeted up around Camp Pendleton. But in San Diego, I would go to the bars, the parades and all that. So, of course I drew heavily from it, my real life.”

For Merritt, writing Code of Conduct was a labor of love. He began writing the novel 15 years ago, working on it sporadically throughout the years, until his editor expressed interest in it last year, and helped him get it published.

Writing the book was also therapeutic for Merritt.

“It was great to go back and revisit it like that, because it was like getting reacquainted with old friends,” Merritt said. “At the time when I was writing it 15 years ago, writing it and the dream of possibly someday getting it published was really cathartic. Because we [enlisted gays and lesbians] couldn’t have a voice. That’s what ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ means – they silence you, and this was my way of not being silenced.”

Code of Conduct is published by Kensington. Mark your calendars – Rich Merritt will be speaking about and signing his book at The Center on Feb. 9.