The Colonel serves With Pride

at Vermont Law School

BY EUAN BEAR

SOUTH ROYALTON — On October
7, the Vermont Law School
Alliance Group hosted itslannual
conference, this year’s install-V
ment on gay men and lesbians
serving in an institutionally . '

' homophobic military. A second

focus was ‘on the United States
government’s attempt to force
universities and law schools to
allow military recruiters on cam-
pus in defiance of those schools’
nondiscrimination policies.

Keynote speaker Col.
Margarethe Cammerrneyer (U .S.
Army, retired) applauded
Vermont Law School as “a law
school that stands up for its: priv-
ilege and isn’t intimidated by the
federal govemment.” *

Then she said, “I love attor-
neys!” to laughter from a mostly
law-school student audience.

_ Cammermeyer is one of a
small_ handful of . servicemembers
who have mounted individual
and ultimately successful legal
challenges to the armed forces’
pre-“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,
Don’t Harass, Don’t Pursue”
(DADT) anti-gay policy.
Beginning in 1989 with a routine
interview .in pursuit of a top-
secret security clearance needed
for her next promotion, that chal-
lenge was finally resolved nearly
5 years later when she was rein-
stated to the Washington State
National Guard under court
order. She retired after 31 years
of service in 1997.

And now, she says on her
website, she is still serving," but
this time it’s the lesbian and gay
members of the armed forces
and their families she serves by
continuing to speak out against
homophobia. It is, she says,
damaging to our country’s mili-
tary strength and preparedness
and costly to the people involved
and the country, besides, to
investigate and discharge ser-
vicemembers simply because of
their orientation.

-Cammermeyer Speaks

Much of the colonel’s talk
rehearsed her history from being
the baby sleeping atop weapons
her mother was delivering to_
Norwegian resistance fighters in
World War II,_tQ serving in_ V
Vietnam and challengingthe _
military’s policy of discharging
women who became pregnant,
up through the making of the
movie of her life following her
win against the government and
being out as a gay activist.

She noted the irony in being
reinstated to her rank as a
colonel in the Army Reserve
under the DADT policy when
there was both a book and a
movie out in the world about her
as a lesbian. n

One reason she loves»attor- ' 
neys is the caring work several
of them put in to argue her case
in civilian and military hearings.
She credits Lambda Legal and
the Northwest Women’s Law
Center for taking on her case.

“You probably know better than

    

_ most what private attorneys bill

per hour. I was a single mother, I

K was going to school, working

two jobs. A private attorney
would have been .extraordinar_ily
expensive.” "

She described the phone call
from her lawyer on the day the ’
ruling was issued. “He called me
and said, ‘Colonel, good mom-—
ing. How you doing today,
Colonel?’ He kept addressing me

as ‘colonel,’ and I still didn’t get '

it, but he finally told me we had
won.” Her case had been suc-
cessful on grounds that she had

been denied due process and -  »

equal protection.

Cammermeyer’s four sons

and grandchildren support her,
she‘said, including the son who
is a Mormon. They all came to
the wedding ceremony she and
partner Diane Divelbess held at

their Whidbey Island home, after
having eloped to Oregon for a
briefly legal marriage.

In a throw-away line,
Cammerrneyer implied that the
U.S. military is a cult: “As with
other cults,” she said, referring to
her own indoctrination and the
loss of her sense of faith in the

- government and military justice.

Cammermeyer acknowledged
some of the servicemembers
who died because of the armed
forces’ institutional homophobia,
such as Allen Schindler and W
Barry Winchell.

Despite the continuing DADT
policy, Cammerrneyer counts as
part“of the achievement of her
case that recruits are no longer
asked ,questions_=ab9u..t ,h.0mosexu— A
ality at enlistment or for promo-
tion.

And, although she admitted
there were unanticipated conse-
quences to her actions challeng-
ing the government, “I have no
regrets.” V