Considering History: Taking Pride in LGBTQ+ Americans in Our Armed Forces

This collection by American research professor Ben Railton explores the connections between America’s previous and current.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth ordered the secretary of the Navy to change the name of the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler ship named after the previous San Francisco mayor and LGBTQ+ rights activist. The identical paperwork suggest that a number of other ships named for civil rights leaders are likewise on the renaming “really helpful listing,” together with the USNS Thurgood Marshall, the USNS Dolores Huerta, and the USNS Lucy Stone. Navy officers have also confirmed that altering the identify of the Harvey Milk was particularly and deliberately timed to happen throughout Satisfaction Month.

There’s a hanging irony to that timing: Lengthy earlier than he was a politician and an activist, Harvey Milk was a U.S. Navy veteran, having served aboard the rescue submarines the USS Chanticleer and USS Kittiwake throughout the Korean Struggle (and persevering with as a diving teacher in San Diego after the warfare’s finish, till he was pressured to simply accept an “Other Than Honorable” discharge resulting from his sexuality). He’s certainly one of numerous LGBTQ+ People to have served within the armed forces all through our historical past, together with throughout each certainly one of our wars, regardless of going through the identical sorts of discrimination and challenges that Milk skilled. Remembering a few of these inspiring people and tales is especially essential throughout this Satisfaction Month.

As we proceed to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the opening salvos of the American Revolution, I’ll start by noting that there won’t be a United States in any respect if it weren’t for the assistance of a homosexual navy officer: Baron Friedrich von Steuben, the German-born common who grew to become one of many main drill and technique instructors for the Continental Military. As this article notes, von Steuben’s sexuality was not extensively nor publicly recognized, however the historical evidence means that he was certainly homosexual. And he was sadly not fallacious to maintain his sexuality personal, as illustrated by the case of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, who was court-martialed and dismissed from the Continental Military in 1778 for “making an attempt to commit sodomy.”

Such penalties, which continued properly into the 20^th century, meant that LGBTQ+ navy members needed to maintain their sexuality personal and hidden in the event that they had been to serve within the armed forces, and so we’ve to go looking via letters, diaries, and comparable archival paperwork to search out data on these troopers’ private lives. For instance, in his e book The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War (2012), the doctor and historian Thomas P. Lowry highlights a letter from a Massachusetts soldier stationed in Virginia who describes an 1864 dance at which regimental drummer boys had been dressed as girls: “A number of the actual girls went, however the boy-girls had been so a lot better trying that they left…A few of [the Drummer boys] regarded adequate to put with and I assume a few of them did get laid with…I do know I slept with mine.”

Whereas the sexuality of most 19^th and early 20^th century LGBTQ+ navy members remained personal till after their loss of life, one who served within the Military throughout World Struggle I grew to become a number one public advocate for the group after his return residence. That was Henry Gerber (1892-1972), the German immigrant who would discovered the groundbreaking Society for Human Rights in Chicago in 1924. Having frolicked in a psychological establishment in 1917 resulting from his sexuality and in danger of being defined as an “enemy alien” resulting from his German heritage, Gerber selected to enlist when the U.S. entered the First World Struggle. He returned to Germany and labored as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Koblenz, the place he grew to become linked to Germany’s gay subculture and commenced to develop the concepts that might result in his lifelong activism.

Starting with the Second World Struggle, the experiences of LGBTQ+ navy members started to be captured extra repeatedly via private narratives and oral historical past tasks, such because the groundbreaking Veterans History Project maintained by the Library of Congress. There we discover the story of Franklin Kameny, whose service in World Struggle II was solely the start of a lifetime of public service and advocacy for fellow LGBTQ+ People. Or Nathaniel Glover Butler, who lied about his sexuality in an effort to be part of the Navy throughout the Vietnam Struggle, the place he served with distinction aboard the USS Ticonderoga. Or Elizabeth Lutes Hillman, whose time within the Air Power throughout the Gulf Struggle led her to work for the Strategic Protection Initiative and in navy justice as a lawyer. Or JaeLee Waldschmidt, who was stationed on the submarine USS Hawaii throughout the Second Iraq Struggle earlier than her identification as a trans girl led her to go away the service and be part of LGBTQ+ advocacy teams.

Right here in a second when trans People are beneath explicit assault from the administration and so many discriminatory forces, I’ve to finish by highlighting one other, up to date transgender navy member whom I’ve had the privilege to get to know via my public scholarly work on patriotism. Shawn Skelly served as an active-duty Naval officer for 20 years, together with time as a pilot, a counterterrorism skilled, and a coaching officer for different Naval Flight Officers. She’s since moved into plenty of governmental roles with each the Obama and Biden administrations, most lately as assistant secretary of defense for readiness beneath Biden. And she or he can also be a co-founder of Out in National Security, a non-profit group working to assist LGBTQ+ group members serving in a wide range of roles.

In 2019, Skelly spoke with Gay City News about President Trump’s makes an attempt to ban transgender navy members, calling these efforts “essentially the most distinguished a part of a broader administration marketing campaign to drive transgender individuals out of the mainstream of American society via the deliberate elimination of authorized recognition and protections of each kind.” That marketing campaign has returned and expanded to all LGBTQ+ Americans with this second Trump administration, as illustrated symbolically by the Harvey Milk identify change. This Satisfaction Month, we are able to problem such efforts by remembering and celebrating Shawn Skelly and all of the LGBTQ+ People who’ve served in our armed forces.