Four years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” some transgender service members still feel neglected even as lesbian and gay service members feel more accepted, several troops said at a conference Monday.
“I have lived a compartmentalized life,” said Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith. “I literally had two sets of friends.”
Smith has served in the military since 1986 and said that her quality of life in the armed services following the repeal of DADT has significantly improved.
For her, the repeal was monumental not only because it overturned a 17-year policy that allowed gays to serve in the military only if they kept their sexual orientation secret, but because she was now able to pull her partner and family out of hiding as well.
Up until the repeal of that law, Smith said she had to pretend her family didn’t exist.
Afterward, Smith said, “We made a conscious choice that, of course, we would be ourselves authentically. When I came out as the first publicly known general, I didn’t come out as a statement of my sexuality, I came out as a statement of my family.”
President Obama last week declared June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month. “I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people,” Obama said in making that announcement.
But former Navy SEAL Kristin Beck said there is one group in the “LGBT” community for which nothing has changed: the “T,” or the transgenders.
“I’m the T, I’m the left-out piece,” Beck said at an event at the Library of Congress hosted by the Veteran’s History Project.
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