What happened to the U.S. Air Force lesbian who `told'? Don't ask.

What happened to the U.S. Air Force lesbian who `told'? Don't ask.
By Eric Zorn
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2010/04/dadt.html



Air Force Lt. Robin Chaurasiya (right) recalls being summoned to a meeting with her commanding officer at Scott Air Force Base near downstate Belleville last year.

He read to her a copy of an e-mail that had come to his attention, one that she'd written to a group of friends in which she discussed her enthusiasm about women she was dating.

"He told me, ‘I'm throwing this away, I'm not going to do anything about it. If I were you, I would be pretty upset if someone were making such claims about my character,'" Chaurasiaya said.

Is Chaurasiaya gay? The officer didn't ask. She didn't tell.

Such stilted conversations are common in the military, according to J. Alexander Nicholson III, executive director of Servicemembers United, a group dedicated to the elimination of the "don't ask, don't tell" law that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.

They amount to "back in the closet with you!" warnings from those who don't have the stomach for investigatory witch hunts or who don't really care that much if gay men and women are serving in the ranks.

But about a week later, Chaurasiya, who attended Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology on a ROTC scholarship and will turn 25 later this month, decided to tell.

The "character" remark had offended and troubled her deeply, she said. So she wrote a letter to her commander telling him she'd been dating girls since she was 13, that the stress of concealing her orientation in "the military's homophobic culture" had become unmanageable and that she was therefore unable to "honestly, openly and successfully fulfill" the commitment she'd made when she enlisted at age 17. (Read that letter and other related documents here)

"In all the ROTC paperwork I did sign a statement saying I'd never had any homosexual contact," she said, "But I wanted the career opportunities so badly I was willing to hide who I was and put up with being a second-class citizen. I'm not anymore."

The Air Force, however, won't let her go. Though more than 15,000 service members have been rooted out under "don't ask, don't tell" since the mid-1990s, the law allows the service to keep valuable personnel who admit to being gay "for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service," even if they are, in fact, gay.

And, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week (Military's refusal to discharge lesbian a new Catch-22), Lt. Gen. Robert Allardice at Scott Air Force Base made just such a ruling in Chaurasiya's case: Her comprehensive admission — and her recent entry into a civil union with her partner — are evidence that she's trying to force the issue of her homosexuality in order to receive a discharge, therefore she must stay.

Allardice has a point. Chaurasiya does want out and that's why she's telling her story in the media. She was unexpectedly called back to active duty last year after spending a year in graduate school, she said, and found herself feeling estranged from military life. She has plans to move to India, her parents' home country, to work with abused children.

Efforts to get comment from Scott Air Force Base officials Monday were not successful.

And while Chaurasiya's case is not a raging injustice — she did get a ROTC scholarship and she is being allowed to serve openly as a lesbian— it does illustrate the absurd and arbitrary nature of the military's policy toward gay people.

The law says, "the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts . . . create(s) an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability."

Though sometimes, apparently, it doesn't.

The exceptions prove the rule is ridiculous.

If Robin Chaurasiya stays, "don't ask, don't tell" must go.