See also: The Diamondback’s video coverage of the eventJarrod Chlapowski was not discharged from the military for being openly gay, but after serving five years as a Korean linguist, he left the service voluntarily, tired of watching more and more of his peers be discharged because of their sexual orientation. He was worried he’d be next.
Chlapowski and partner Alex Nicholson — both former members of the armed forces — were invited to speak to students at the College Democrats’ screening of “Ask Not,” a PBS documentary that focuses on the controversy surrounding former President Bill Clinton’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the Art-Sociology building last night.
“It’s still hard to think I’m not in the military sometimes,” Chlapowski said at the event.
The film followed both men for seven weeks of their 2007 Call to Duty tour, sponsored by Servicemembers United, in which they and other young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender veterans shared their experiences in serving the country under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
It told the story of an armed service member who dealt with identities that seemed to be at odds — soldier and gay man — and followed the efforts of Soulforce’s Right to Serve campaign, which led sit-ins at military recruiting centers that turned down would-be enlisters for proclaiming their homosexuality.
“It’s very arbitrarily enforced,” Chlapowski said. “It depends on the commander.”
“You have some people who try to abide by what they understand the policy to be, and they won’t discharge anybody unless they’re backed into a corner,” Nicholson added. “So unless you walk in and say, ‘Hey, I’m gay, I want out of the military’ — which happens — they won’t discharge anybody unless that happens. And you have others who will sort of accept rumor and suspicion as evidence. It’s all over the place. There’s really no consequence to not following the regulations at all.”
But sloppy enforcement is only one of the issues that plagues the modern application of the 16-year-old policy.
More than 12,000 members of the military have been discharged for being gay, according to the film, and there have been more than 300 discharges of members with much-needed language skills.
Nicholson joined those ranks in March 2002. Though he speaks four different languages, he served as an intelligence officer for only a year before being discharged for being gay.
One of President Barack Obama’s campaign promises was to reverse the policy, but won’t likely follow through until at least next spring.
“I would put the chances of that happening at maybe 25 percent,” Nicholson said. “And there’s another school of thought that thinks that it will be repealed in 2011 because it will be after the midterms, but still a year away from the presidential election cycle, so it’ll be a safe year.”
According to a June Gallup poll, most Americans support the right of LBGT people to serve in the military. But the issue continues to be hotly debated across the country and at the university.
“If people want to keep a secret that’s fine,” sophomore studio art major Evan Ritz said. “But if people want to be open with it, I don’t think it should be a problem.”
“I think the struggle for LGBT rights is one of the biggest civil rights issues of our generation, and probably the most important for our generation,” College Democrats president Amy Hartman added.
Others disagree.
“I feel many people in the military come from conservative families,” sophomore government and politics major Tarang Bapna said. “So, I feel like, they come from cultures where they’re not exposed to homosexuality and therefore if you were to just suddenly change a policy rapidly, it would cause some friction in the army.”
“Our issue is basically that we don’t, … especially during a time of war, … we don’t want anything that could possibly affect morale or hurt recruiting,” said senior criminology and criminal justice major Clyde Thompson, who is Vice President of Public Affairs for College Republicans and also served in the Navy.
“A lot of different situations present themselves where people just find themselves really uncomfortable being naked in front of a gay guy, being woken up in the middle of the night by a gay guy,” he said.
But Nicholson said he still has hope for this generation’s ability to make a change.
“I think people who are in college are in a period where they’re going through a heightened awareness of a potential impact of their voice,” he said. “All it takes is a small group of loud voices and dedicated activists or even advocates to really move a member [of Congress] or to speed up the timeline.”
aisaacs@umdbk.com
