"He asked if that was true, and I said yes," Dresch said. "I have never been big on lying, so I told the truth. I figured the discharge was coming. But I was disappointed. I really loved being in the military."
Dresch, who is currently studying automotive mechanics in Phoenix, said she saw the Army as more than a career. "It was my life at that point," she said, adding that her unit is in Iraq, and she wished she could be there too.
"Without a doubt I would go back into the Army," Dresch said. "This is my country, and I want to serve. I want to go back and fight for the freedoms that I believe in."
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is an “unconstitutional violation of the service members’ free speech rights and a denial of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.” Rose Saxe, ACLU staff attorney with the organization’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, said, “There is no rational basis for the government’s policy.”
Meanwhile, interest in a new book about lesbians in the military is rising. “Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military” is a compilation of true stories, as told by lesbians serving in the four branches of the armed service. Its author is Zsa Zsa Gershick, a lesbian who conducted and published the interviews, served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1978 to 1983.
In an appearance on C-Span, the public service television network funded by America’s cable companies, Ms. Gershick charged that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is unworkable and “based on prejudice”.
She recounted the experiences of some of the military members whose stories are presented in her book, contending that “in a field hospital in Iraq, a wounded soldier doesn’t give a damn about the sexual orientation of the person saving his or her life.”
There is zero evidence, she said, that the presence of gay men and women in the military has any negative effect whatever on unit cohesion or morale. The result of the Clinton policy, she added, is to “force people to live a lie.”
Among the 10,000 gays discharged from the military, she said, are translators, linguists, and people with highly specialized -- and expensive training – who the military now desperately needs. “Where are their replacements going to come from?” she asked.
William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and elsewhere for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration and now writes on subjects ranging from human rights to foreign affairs for a number of newspapers ond online journals.
