October 1993 Conduct Unbecoming: A Review and a Question David Landers Randy Shilts’ latest tome is entitled Conduct Unbecoming:Gays and Les- bians in the U.S. Military. Over the last five years, he interviewed 1,100 people for his book. He takes us on an amazing journey of personal pain, frustration, strength and power as he walks us through the lives of men and women who have chosen, for a variety of rea- sons, to serve the Unites‘ States of America through military service. He employs the same style I personally found intriguing and helpful in his best seller And the Band Played On. Shilts starts with a prologue covering the years 1778-1954 and then begins to reveal the personal struggles of gay and lesbian military service personnel. The title of his first chapter is What Tom Dooley Really Wanted: A Prologue to Vietnam. This title struck me because as a young high school student I be- came intrigued with the actions of a young doctor who had been in the Navy and then who left military service to dedicate his life to helping heal the children of Laos. In all of the studying I did of that man in my youth, there was never a mention that he was gay. There was no mention that he had been set up by the military in one of their witch hunts for gays in the military and that he had been discharged from the Navy because he had committed the crime of being gay. There was no mention that he had received an undesirable dis- charge in spite of having been named by the Gallup P011 in 1959 as the sev- enth most admired man in the United States. To me he was someone I ad- mired, looked‘ up to, (probably was at- tracted to but didn’t realize it at the time) and whose selflessness repre- sented the best in giving to others. Shilts presents us with story after story, all documented carefully “because of the military’s exhaustive record keep- mg”. We come to know Leonard Mat- lovich, Vernon Berg, the outrageous “Simone” Perry Watkins, our own Gene Barfield and his infamous tupper- ware party, and we learn of the unique difficulties women faced through the chapter entitled Dykes and Whores. Penny Rand, Carole Brock, Carolyn “Dusty” Pruitt, Barbara Baum and doz- ens of women whose struggles for jus- tice in an unjust military are detailed and their struggles become very per- sonal to the reader. Perhaps one of the most disturbing things for me is the overwhelming evidence presented of the absolute discrimination all women in the military faced. A woman who was propositioned by a male peer or su- perior and who chose, for whatever rea- son, to rebuke that proposition could be accused of being a lesbian and the in- vestigation would immediately begin - not an investigation of the male’s in- appropriate conduct, not the male’s ha- rassment, but the woman was immedi- ately suspect and investigated. , As if Shilts’ reports on the military and its unconscienceable and unforgivable treatment of gay men and lesbians in the military were not disturbing enough, he then presents us with doc- umentation of how our government abused, used and mistreated military personnel with AIDS. “When it finally acknowledged the problem, the Navy responded to its early AIDS cases just as the Air Force had, by seeking to dis- charge AIDS sufferers for being gay.” If you want to be better informed about this issue I strongly suggest Conduct Unbecoming. It will cause you pain, but it is very much worth while in- vesting the time and energy it takes to read. Randy Shilts has provided our community with yet another gift and I, for one, am grateful to him for this. His own battle with AIDS prevented him from including everything he wanted to in this book. He had material from the Persian Gulf War but recent hospital- izations and deadlines prevented that material from being covered. One issue continues to disturb me about this book and the entire dis- cussion of gays and lesbians in the mil- itary. Randy Shilts documents personal struggles in his book but also raises a disturbing political issue for our com- munity. He presents the additional dif- ficulties many gays and lesbians in the military faced because our community did not see their struggles with the mil- itary as a priority in our struggles for safety and acceptance and justice. Many things became possible for peo- ple of color after the military was in- tegrated. Truman’s courage in in- tegrating the military paved the way for other integrations to occur in America. I was disturbed that Gene Barfield was not asked to speak at this year’s Gay Pride rally at Battery Park. He is Pres- ident of Gay Lesbian Bisexual Vet- erans of America and could have pro- vided us with information, motivation to write letters and a more accurate picture of what the ban really means to all of us. Have we as a community supported our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in the military or have we dismissed their needs and struggles? There is enough fighting against us going on in this coun- try right now and we are all vulnerable. I suspect it would be helpful if we became educated around this issue, wrote letters, made phone calls and showed our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in the military that they have our support. Most people I know who enter the military do so because it can provide economic se- curity (at least it used to), they can gain valuable skills they could otherwise not get or they are genuinely interested in serving their country. We can challenge their motives and exclude them or we can understand and support. It is our choice whether or not we too are willing to par- ticipate in Conduct Unbecoming. V Call the Outright VT Friday 7-9 pm Questions? Gay/LesbianIBisexual Youth Info-Line 1 800-GLB-CHAT Youth Group Meeting Stephanie Buck, M.A. Elm Street Feminist Counseling 155 Elm Street - Montpelier, VT 05602 - 802 223-7173 Psychotherapist I.