By Jeb Phillips
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Don't kid yourself. There have been gay members of the American military for a long time, says a Bronze Star-winning World War II veteran who was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. "I didn't want to be gay. I was fighting the tendency," said Rupert Starr, 88, of his time in the infantry. "A number knew they were gay and wanted to serve."
Starr, of Upper Arlington, stopped fighting the tendency when he was 28. He lived with his late partner for 53years. In his own old age, Starr has spoken here and in Washington against a U.S. military policy that he finds increasingly "ridiculous" and that has become a national debating point: "don't ask, don't tell."
A previous blog post about Rupert Starr
A 1993 law restrains the ability of the military to ask service members about their sexual orientation, and it allows gays to serve in the military if they aren't open about their homosexuality.
When he was running for office, President Barack Obama pledged to end the policy, but he said Congress has to change the law first.
The U.S. House passed a defense-spending bill in May that included a provision to repeal the law. But in September, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a similar bill after Democrats said they would add an unrelated immigration amendment to it.
National polls seem to indicate support for a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey conducted in September found that 67 percent favored letting gays serve openly.
The largest U.S. veterans organization opposes a repeal. The American Legion argues that the U.S. military is stretched by two overseas conflicts, and it says this is not the time to make such a large policy change.
Steve Ebersole, a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War and the commander of the American Legion district in Franklin County, said that any distraction when he was in the military could mean putting someone's life at risk. The repeal of this policy would create a huge distraction, he added.
"The military was not meant to be a social experiment," said Ebersole, 63 and a resident of the Northeast Side. "The military has one particular purpose: to defend this nation."
But Starr and some other central Ohio veterans argue that the military can best fulfill that mission by letting gays serve. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, who heads a veterans program at Ohio Dominican University on the North Side, has spoken in Washington and to newspapers across the country supporting a repeal.
"I don't think it works for military readiness," he said of the policy in an interview last week.
A March congressional report found that nearly 14,000 U.S. forces were discharged under "don't ask, don't tell" once their sexual orientation was discovered. It took money to train those service members, money to discharge them and money to train their replacements, said Laich, who is not gay. The military is wasting resources getting rid of people who are doing a good job, he said.
Laich, 61, said he never thought much about the policy until he was a brigade commander and "strongly suspected" that one of his subordinate commanders was a lesbian.
"She was one of my most-capable commanders," he said.
Brian Endicott, 37, who manages a testing center at Ohio State University, said he joined the Army in 1992 because then-President Bill Clinton planned to end a ban on gays serving in the military. "Don't ask, don't tell" was a compromise position after Clinton couldn't get the support of military leaders.
Brian Endicott
Endicott, who is gay, said he would have made the Army his career if he'd been able to serve openly. He decided not to re-enlist in 1996.
"I am being forced to lie about a major part of my life on a daily basis," he said of his mindset then.
The position of the American Legion doesn't make sense to Endicott. It's insulting to a soldier that he can't handle a policy change, he said - and this is as good a time as any.
"Should we be discharging talented, trained people while we are in a war?" Endicott asked.
Service members know that there are gays among them and have accepted it, said Starr, the World War II veteran. And gays can certainly defend the country as well as anyone.
"I have proven it myself in World War II, for heaven's sakes," he said.
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