Before you follow the Human Rights Campaign down another rabbit hole...

Steve Stovey, Navy: 'As a man, I can't perform the way I used to. I just feel damaged.
All I remember, along with the pain, is the slapping sound of being raped. I try to make
love to my wife, but I can't - I'm triggered. I'm traumatized by that sound.'

It's now four years after the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, a moment that represented the culmination of hard work by groups like the Human Rights Campaign. At the time, I was still in the service. I'd seen a lot. I was outed in my unit. I stayed in and got an honorable discharge. But I knew that there was much more to the story than just pulling back DADT so that gays could serve openly. I knew that the vast majority of gays in the military wanted their sexuality kept secret -- because they feared other gays' sexual aggressiveness.

This was the problem that they didn't want to talk about on DADT. The Human Rights Campaign received boatloads of money to push for the repeal based on one narrative: Patriotic gay wants to serve but bad evil homophobes force him to lie.

That story was actually not representative of a lot of gays in the military. In the Pentagon survey released on December 1, 2010, it was established that only 15% of gays in the military planned to come out of the closet. The rest didn't want to be out in their unit. Why? Because they didn't want to be an open target for other gay men to rape.

And no, I don't mean closeted gay men of the American Beauty suppressed-homophobe-Marine variety. I mean out of the closet, bells and whistles, homosexual men who flaunt their identity and want a nice piece of meat to enjoy. If you are in the military, and you are gay, and you are open, those other homosexuals can use physical force and lots of other forms of coercion to force you to have sex with them.

So a classic DADT story was there, but not noticed, and it differed from "Patriotic gay wants to serve but bad evil homophobes force him to lie." It went like this: "I was outed, then I was raped, then I wanted to leave, so I used DADT to get out."  (more...)

Before you follow the Human Rights Campaign down another rabbit hole...

Related:

US: 38 Men Raped in Military Every Day

The male victims of military rape tell their heartbreaking stories