During college, Patrick Moloughney - now 33 and a Procter & Gamble brand manager living Downtown - realized he was gay. After studying the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy requiring gay service members to keep secret their sexual orientation, he felt increasingly conflicted.
Local effect of 'don't ask, don't tell'
By Mark Curnutte • mcurnutte@enquirer.com • December 7, 2010
There was no question in Patrick Moloughney's mind that he would enter the military.
His father served in the Air Force. His older brother attended college on a Navy ROTC scholarship.
Moloughney went to George Washington University on a Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship in 1995. By his senior year, he was a platoon commander.
Yet he never received a Navy commission.
During college, Moloughney - now 33 and a Procter & Gamble brand manager living Downtown - realized he was gay. After studying the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy requiring gay service members to keep secret their sexual orientation, he felt increasingly conflicted.
"The very first Navy core value is honor," he said. "How could I live with integrity and obey this law at the same time?"
Moloughney couldn't. He told his commanding officer he was gay. Within weeks, his ROTC appointment was terminated, written in two words on his official paperwork: "Special (homosexuality)."
He is among the 13,000 service men and women discharged since 1993 under "don't ask, don't tell."
If the law were stricken from the books, Moloughney, although older with an established career, said he would join the reserves. "I'd be first in line to serve my country again," he said.
The law is expected to come up for Senate debate vote within the next two weeks. That's less than a month after a Pentagon report stated that allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the U.S. armed forces would not harm its effectiveness, even in wartime.
The vote of Sen. George Voinovich, the outgoing Ohio Republican, is pivotal, according to advocates with the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay civil rights group. Voinovich voted no on repeal the last time, when it lost by two votes.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the vote a "matter of urgency" last week and said in a news conference that repeal would not be the wrenching, traumatic change that many fear and predict.
Still, the endorsement for repeal from Gates, the Obama administration and the Joints Chiefs of Staff did not silence the most recognizable opponent, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. "At this time, we should be inherently cautious about making changes that would affect our military," the former presidential candidate told the Wall Street Journal.
The policy was enacted 17 years ago because the presence of openly gay men and women in the service would undermine unit cohesion, say advocates of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Yet Moloughney and other gay people who once served say that forcing someone to lie about their sexuality undermines unit cohesion and has caused the needless loss of thousands of skilled, highly-trained military specialists - including Arab and Korean linguists.
"Straight service members wear wedding rings, talk about family, display spouse's pictures and embrace their loved ones at the dock upon returning to port from months at sea," said Moloughney, whose ROTC Naval training missions took him to Europe and northern Russia. "But their gay and lesbian peers must actively conceal every sign of their personal lives."
He has lobbied for repeal with members of Congress, including Voinovich.
Moloughney is not the only one who would serve again.
So would Brian Endicott, 37, an Ohio State University graduate student who served four years in the U.S. Army as a tank driver. He enlisted out of high school in Columbus.
Brian Endicott
"But given the environment of `Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' I chose not to re-enlist for another four years," Endicott said recently at a repeal rally at Xavier University. "I would have signed another contract. I'd sign another contract today if they repealed it."
Advocates for repeal say the military is selective in how aggressively it discharges gay men and lesbians from its ranks.
Department of Defense data shows a yearly high of 1,273 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharges in 2001 - the year of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Those numbers dropped to 428 in 2009.
U.S. military remains engaged in warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan today, all the more reason to repeal the law, said Moloughney.
"You need to keep all of the qualified service men and women in uniform, regardless of sexual orientation," he said. "There is no better time than now to repeal (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) and end the hypocrisy that has plagued this misguided policy from Day 1."
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