“Ensign Joe,” 23, a division officer on the USS Boxer stationed in San Diego, stands outside a nightclub waiting for a friend. Like all the other officers off duty this balmy evening, Joe is eagerly anticipating having a drink with friends, and the music and lights emanating from within the club are a beacon of warmth after a long week aboard ship.

But then, like a sudden slap of ocean spray across deck, a captain steps in front of Joe. “Why are you here?” he demands. Joe hears the disgust and hatred in his voice, and his blood rises. But he knows nothing he says will change what the captain believes because the nightclub is for gays.

Legally, going to a gay bar as a member of the military is termed an “associational activity,” and does not constitute cause for dismissal under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT),” the policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they don’t disclose their sexual orientation.

But this type of incident is “typical,” according to Steve Ralls, director of communications for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “Within the military, rumor and hearsay are often used to begin improper investigations. … If a servicemember comes out, even after being harassed or asked by a colleague, once he or she ‘tells,’ they have broken the ‘Don’t Tell’ prong of the policy, which then subjects them to dismissal.”

Yet views toward gay servicemembers are becoming more egalitarian. A 2006 Zogby poll showed that 73 percent of armed forces personnel are comfortable serving alongside gays, and a Harris poll this year found that 55 percent supported allowing gays to serve openly, up from 48 percent in 2000. Further, political luminaries, such as former President Jimmy Carter, have called upon Congress to revisit DADT, and the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a bill originally introduced in 2005 to secure full equality for gays in the military, is once again before Congress. If it passes, it will repeal DADT. Unless that transpires, however, the estimated 65,000 gay servicemembers (including guard and reserve) in the U.S. military do not share equal status with their heterosexual colleagues.

As petty officer “Jennifer,” a 22-year-old lesbian serving aboard the USS Boxer, puts it, “We support our country, but our country will not support us.”

The four servicemembers aboard the USS Boxer who participated in this article are well aware of the need to hide their sexual identities in the course of duty. Indeed, during the time they corresponded with the Gay & Lesbian Times, the Navy discharged one of their peers. According to his shipmate, “ToPher,” age 26, a third class petty officer with three years of service, the infraction was possessing a gay porn magazine – another “associational activity.”

“When they want to find something against you, they will. The reason he was discharged was for something totally different,” says ToPher, who has three years of service but is considering “disclosing” because the pressure of hiding his identity is wearing on him. “I have lost 30 pounds due to depression because I have no one to talk to. I tried to talk to the psych. doc onboard, but he made me feel bad for being who I [am], even though I suspect he is [gay]. … When I tried to talk to an outside source, I was the one placed on trial. Basically, I asked to be removed from [his department], but my chief told me ‘no,’ unless I wrote a formal statement on a specific person. But if I did that then it would shine a light on me, not him. He couldn’t be kicked out for suspicion that he discriminates, but I could be kicked out for suspicion that I [am gay]. Sucks, but I am at the point where I might just tell someone to get kicked out, ’cause I hate having to deal with this.”

The lack of parity gay and lesbian servicemembers experience is pervasive – extending into myriad aspects of life. One of the most difficult aspects is the inability to be sexual.

“It is going on day 102,234,324 that I haven’t had sex or been touched by another person, and I am almost certain my body is starting to die,” ToPher writes.

Even talking with peers about private life is off limits.

“Hearing others talk about their wives/husbands, or talk about sex with the opposite sex, I just sit quietly, unable and unwilling to contribute to the conversation,” he continues.

For Jennifer, the worst is coming home after a nine-month deployment and not being able to openly embrace her lover. “Gay and lesbian marines have to ‘keep it on the down low,’” she says. “Everyone is hugging and kissing their husbands and wives. Yet we still have to [con]tain our overjoyed emotions. Not even holding hands is tolerable.”

Then there are the “jokes.” A 2000 Defense Department inspector general survey found that 80 percent of servicemembers had heard “offensive speech, derogatory names, jokes or remarks about gays” in the previous year.

“Hearing the jokes and not being able to defend myself” is the worst part of daily experience on board, says “Tuffy,” a lesbian with five years of service.

While these servicemembers say serving under DADT is no joke, even before its implementation the military’s policy toward gays and lesbians sometimes verged on absurdity.

Until 1981, for example, according to Wikipedia.com, the armed forces had a “Queen for a Day” rule, which allowed individuals accused of homosexual conduct to remain in the forces if they could prove their behavior was a temporary occurrence.

Knowing that dismissal could result, should he report the confrontational captain, Joe Ensign vacillates between defiance and resignation in the weeks following the incident. “I hate the fact that I have to answer to someone about why I am where I am and about my sexuality. It is really upsetting that you can lose everything you work for because of who you sleep with. … So I am on the verge of coming completely out. … You have my consent. [You can publish my] name, picture, story, the whole nine. Thanks for listening,” he writes shortly after the captain confronts him.

But soon fear gains the upper hand. “I am not sure I have the courage to get out on my own because the Navy is such a secure job. … I am tired of hiding who I am, but I won’t do anything that may result in getting a dishonorable discharge.”

Finally, Joe writes with resignation: “It’s sad that you could lose all you’ve worked for, just for saying who you are.”

[Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identity of the servicemembers interviewed for this story.]

1. Banning gays hurts military readiness. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) undermines military preparedness by denying the services trained personnel critical to our nation’s defense. The Pentagon has discharged 11,000 servicemembers for being gay in the past 14 years, the equivalent of two Army brigades. DADT requires gay servicemembers to lie as a condition of service, eroding the bonds of trust necessary for unit cohesion.

2. Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will reduce anti-gay and sexual harassment. Laws that discriminate foster harassment and violence. In March 2000, the DOD Inspector General questioned 75,000 servicemembers and found that 80 percent experienced or witnessed anti-gay harassment, leading the Pentagon to state that anti-gay harassment undermines unit cohesion. Five percent reported witnessing or experiencing anti-gay physical assaults.

4. Pentagon and government studies support gays in the military. Published government studies support gays serving in the military. An exhaustive 1993 Rand Report concluded that the U.S. military could lift the gay ban without detriment to readiness. The PERSEREC Reports (1988, 1989) concluded that (1) there was no empirical evidence to support the gay ban, and (2) there was no empirical data to suggest that gays differed from heterosexuals on any performance measure.

5. America’s allies support gays in the military. Twenty-five nations allow gays in the military, including Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Studies have concluded that lifting the ban in those countries have had no effect on military readiness or unit cohesion. American troops served with openly gay troops from 12 countries in Operation Enduring Freedom and nine countries in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

6. Pentagon and service leaders support gays in the military. In 1993, General Barry Goldwater said that “You don’t have to be straight, to shoot straight” when he spoke in support of lifting the ban on gays serving in the military. General Wesley Clark, former Navy Secretary and Senator John Chaffee, Assistant Secretaries of Defense Edward Dorn and Lawrence Korb all support gays serving in the United States military.

7. The public supports gays in the military. Between 63 and 79 percent of Americans polled answered that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 57 percent in 1992, the year before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was implemented. A 2006 Zogby poll showed that 73 percent of armed forces personnel are comfortable serving alongside gays, and a Harris poll this year found that 55 percent supported allowing gays to serve openly, up from 48 percent in 2000.

8. National security agencies do not discriminate against gays. The CIA, DIA, FBI and NSA do not discriminate based on sexual orientation. In a post-September 11 world, these organizations’ contributions to the security of our country are paramount. Except for the military, the federal government does not discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation.

9. Taxpayers spend approximately $26 million a year to train replacements for those discharged as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Taxpayers have spent approximately one quarter of a billion dollars training replacements for discharged gay personnel since the passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Sourse: Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

Although the U.S. Department of Defense’s Web site reports that discharges based on the Pentagon’s homosexual conduct policy make up a “small fraction” of dismissals (0.3 percent), the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) says that number translates to armed forces firings of two people every day, a total of between 700 and 1,200 men and women each year, or more than 11,000 dismissals to date.

“While the total number of dismissals is a small percentage of the overall force size, the impact is significant,” says Steve Ralls, director of communications for the organization, which provides free legal services for gay and lesbian servicemembers. “Nearly 800 of those dismissed … have had skills deemed ‘mission-critical’ by the Pentagon,” Ralls says, noting that his figures come from the Department of Defense.

Anyone caught having same-sex relations under DADT (including “straights”) is subject to dismissal. And once dismissed under DADT, re-instatement is not an option. Despite this, the U.S. Navy recently recalled Petty Officer Second Class Jason Knight after dismissing him last year under DADT. The Pentagon denies having recalled Knight, saying, according to an ABC News item, that “Knight volunteered, and the Navy accepted him.” Now that Knight’s told the media his story, the Navy has once again dismissed him.

In 1948, then President Harry Truman signed an executive order stating, “There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”

Truman didn’t mention sexual orientation in his speech, but his declaration nevertheless caused an uproar among military brass.

The “trouble,” as then General Dwight Eisenhower had advised the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier that year, was growing support for racial desegregation in the U.S. military.

“If we attempt, merely by passing a lot of laws, to force someone to like someone else, we are just going to get into trouble,” Eisenhower warned.

The parallel between mid-20th century attitudes toward inter-racial armed forces and the modern mind-set toward gays and lesbians in the military is illustrated in “Discrimination 1948 and 1993: Their words” a New Republic article. Written in 1993, as then President Clinton introduced the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy, which allows gays, lesbians and bisexuals to serve in the military as long as they don’t disclose their sexual orientation, the article predicts that Americans will one day be as embarrassed by GLBT discrimination as we are by our racist history.

An average of 4,000 servicemembers choose not to re-enlist each year because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” estimates Gary Gates, a statistician at the Williams Project at the University of California-Los Angeles. If this continues, it will represent nearly one in six of the 18,000 new troops the military intends to add each year for the next five years, Gates reports in “Effects of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ on Retention among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Military Personnel,” a paper he wrote for the Urban Institute, a non-partisan economic and social policy research organization.

(Gates’ study also reports that “the number of convicted felons who enlisted in the U.S. military nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, suggesting a lowering of standards in order to meet recruitment targets.”)

Few servicemembers dismissed involuntarily on the basis of sexual orientation successfully challenge the charges against them and achieve retention. “It’s very difficult to successfully challenge a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ investigation. Indeed, only a small handful of members have done so since the law’s implementation,” says Steve Ralls, director of communications for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). The organization, which allocates about 2.5 million annually from funds contributed by individual donors to pay for such legal services, last year received 658 requests for assistance on issues ranging from coming out to military investigations to harassment issues from servicemembers. “In 2006, we were successful in fighting to retain nine servicemembers. In 2005, we were successful in three dozen cases, which was our best year ever for retentions,” Ralls says.

However, usually the most the organization can do is to ensure servicemembers “receive the discharge characterization they deserve, the benefits and compensation they have earned, and that they are treated fairly during the discharge process,” Ralls says.