The Diversionary Theatre held a fundraiser for the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network (SLDN) on Wednesday, Nov. 12, featuring Marc Wolf’s Another American: Asking & Telling, which plays at the theatre through Dec. 6.

The SLDN is a national nonprofit agency that combats discrimination and harassment of military personnel, particularly in relation to the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. SLDN steering committee member Andrew Brooks, assisted by local SLDN board members, including Anna Curren and Dr. Art Kelleher, primarily organized the benefit.

Another American: Asking & Telling, first released in New York in 1998, is a one-man stage documentary that explores how America has confronted the issue of GLBs in the military. Wolf’s work is inspired by the techniques of actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, best known for the one-woman plays Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, who received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” Fellowship for creating a new form of theater that is a blend of journalism, intimate dialogue, social commentary and theatrical art.

According to interviews Wolf gave a few years after Another American was released, Wolf, who double majored in political science and theater at Williams College in Massachusetts before moving to New York City to become an actor, was inspired to combine his political and social beliefs with his career in theater a few years after attending 1993’s GLBT March on Washington.

In 1996, wondering why an issue as controversial as GLBTs in the military seemed to have dropped off the nation’s political radar, Wolf realized that the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy had been effective at either eliminating or silencing the GLBT military community. In response, he decided to investigate and spent the next two years tape-recording interviews with over 150 people who provided candid and often controversial or conflicting opinions of the issue of GLBT people serving openly in the military.

The resulting Another American: Asking & Telling portrays a collection of characters struggling with the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and what it means with regard to the nation’s sexual politics and the United States military’s sanctioned discrimination.

Wolf interviewed sociologists, professors, lawyers, activists, parents, politicians, veterans and active-duty military personnel from World War II to the present, including people who oppose GLBs’ right to serve. Though many of the names have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved, the monologues in Another American are transcribed verbatim from the interviews, and comprise a distilled version of all the interviewees into approximately 20 different characters that appear throughout the two-hour monologue.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, signed into law by Bill Clinton on Nov. 30, 1993. Clinton approved the law with the intention of fulfilling a campaign promise to allow GLBT Americans to serve openly in the military. However, since the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy went into effect, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged on the basis of sexual orientation.

In a written statement made to the SLDN in conjunction with the organization’s recent End the Witch Hunts national dinner, the former President criticized the federally-sanctioned ban on GLBTs in the military, saying, “Simply put, there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.… Great Britain lifted its ban on gays after our debate in 1993, and over the past year I did not see any of the critics of gays in the military here in America asking the British to stay out of Afghanistan or Iraq.”

SLDN Executive Director C. Dixon Osburn was appreciative of Clinton’s statement, and encouraged by the mainstream political support. “President Clinton, along with the overwhelming majority of Americans, recognizes that the service of lesbian and gay Americans is in our nation’s best interest,” Osburn said at the national dinner. “Military leaders, elected officials and now a former Commander-in-Chief have all questioned the rationale behind ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Congress should heed their calls and repeal this law now. A decade of federally sanctioned discrimination is a decade too long.”

Osburn spoke at the fundraiser, as did Michael Jason Tiner, who was dismissed from the Navy after outing himself on Bravo’s gay dating show Boy Meets Boy, which aired July 29. Wolf was in Paris at the time and was unable to attend. The Diversionary Theatre’s showing of Another American stars Russell Garrett, and is directed by Rosina Reynolds.

In an interview prior to the benefit, Curren discussed the status of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regard to the upcoming Presidential election.

“Wesley Clark, who is now running [as a Democratic Party candidate] is a former NATO chief,” she said. “He and Howard Dean — and in fact pretty much the whole slate — are very much in favor of getting rid of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’… There is a definite move to finally recognize that this is silly. And I think that the fact that our military is at an all-time low of preparedness in terms of manpower is going to be a factor. So we’re certainly hoping to see a change.… If you didn’t have hope, you couldn’t go on.”

Curren also mentioned the efforts that the SLDN has made this year since the Lawrence & Garner v. the State of Texas June 2003 Supreme Court ruling striking down sodomy laws. She explained that SLDN has already argued its first case in the U.S. Court of Appeals, which is the highest military court in the country, to get rid of the discrimination in the military.

“[T]here is a tie in there with the success of that that we’re very optimistic about. But, god, you know, the wheels turn so slowly. It takes forever.”

For more information about the SLDN, call (619) 239-4180. For tickets to Another American: Asking & Telling at Diversionary Theatre, call (619) 220-0097.