Going Mainstream

This past week I took a couple of days off from work and attended the AMVETs National Symposium on the needs of young veterans. Over 1,000 people gathered in Chicago and worked in small groups to identify solutions to emerging problems in four specific areas: benefits, health care, homelessness, and employment. Each working group of a dozen individuals spent two days tackling hard questions about their issue. Our group focused on long-term care, and included women and men veterans from WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm/Shield, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Five of the people in our group were disabled and under 35 years old. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) our differences, by the end of the symposium, I came to be incredibly moved by their actions.

When I went to Chicago, I decided to take to heart some of the gay community’s criticism that gay veterans do not go ‘mainstream’ and show other veterans that we exist. Within the gay rights community it is very easy for me to be out — as both a lesbian and a veteran — because many of my activist colleagues understand the struggle I had for 12 years in the Army. At the AMVETs symposium, for the first time in my life, I entered into a group of straight military peers and did not go back into the closet. I even took a date to the dinner and treated her just as I would if she were my date at a gay event. I won’t lie . . . it was very hard for me, emotionally, and I worried about the reactions of my fellow veterans.

What a WONDERFUL experience it ended up being! During our working group, the other veterans asked if there were any specific needs that gay veterans needed addressed. They made genuine recommendations to change policies that affect gay veterans. Two of the recommendations were to eliminate the policy of collecting disability pay to repay severance pay that gay personnel receive when they are separated, and to provide confidentiality to gay members when they complete their separation physicals so their future health is not jeopardized.

Policy changes were not the only thing that happened during those two days. Veterans from all generations made an effort to come up to me with my date and say thank you for my service and to say how sorry they are for how I was treated in the past. They were incredibly welcoming at every event. A group of men even went to a Chicago lesbian bar after dinner with us, and three people from my group have said they will attend the SLDN annual dinner with their wives and girlfriends.

The lesson learned in all of this? Gay veterans should GO MAINSTREAM! It was important for me to go back to the mainstream veterans’ community, tell my story, and in the end, I was able to effect change and give back to the entire veterans’ community.

It was the biggest battle I have won (so far, at least) in my struggle with being a gay soldier. So, get out there and GO MAINSTREAM!!

- Stacy Vasquez