Views » December 27, 2004

A Test of Values

By Hans Johnson

It’s no wonder some Americans seem content to view gay people through the blurry lens of moral judgment. Those who lecture on values rather than listen to facts might be struck dumb if they looked more closely at the lives of real individuals and the struggles they’ve endured.

Take former Airman First Class Robert Firpo, a 24-year-old Mormon from Washington state who now makes his home near the nation’s capital. His fellow Mormons and loyal veterans would not believe the ordeal of his early adulthood—much less that it happened at taxpayers’ expense, implicated both church and state, and left him without recourse. Indeed, it offends any sense of patriotism: Firpo, like 10,000 fellow service members in the past decade, has seen his talent and training wasted, and his torment compounded by being punished for his own persecution.

Antigay discrimination takes a toll on the very forces dedicated to destroying intolerant terrorists like al Qaeda. Such hatred is the target of a federal lawsuit, filed by 12 former soldiers in conjunction with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) that renews the fight to lift the ban on openly gay members of the armed services.

The Pentagon’s ban on gays, dubbed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” is a farce. Commanders and investigators routinely and coercively violate the first premise. The ban suffered a blow in December, when a military appeals court nixed a sodomy judgment against a heterosexual soldier. The ruling cited the 2003 Supreme Court decision that nullified state sodomy laws and denounced those that singled out gay people. A similar sodomy law has, until now, survived in military code—a cornerstone for the policy of ferreting out and expelling gay people from the ranks.

This policy seems even crueler in the face of the determination of soldiers, like Firpo, who continue serving even as the military intimidatingly and humiliatingly pries into their lives. He is not a plaintiff in the SDLN case, but his story speaks volumes about values such as honesty, integrity, public service and perserverance—and the failure of religious and military officials to destroy them.

Enlisting in the Air Force in 1998 to learn Korean and thereby fill a void in our nation’s global security apparatus, Firpo landed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He showed promise and emerged as a leader of his group. Firpo had already faced interrogation over his sexual orientation during basic training, according to an SLDN report. But at Monterey the meanness intensified. His fellow trainees, taking a cue from commanding officers, repeatedly asked him if he was “a fag.” Goaded by teachers and an officer who told him he should be in jail, other airmen stepped up their harassment. Desperate for help, he sought out a chaplain, who told him to “grow up” and “correct” his behavior. On the note board of his barracks room, he received more than 100 messages threatening him.

Cut off from his family, which wasn’t speaking to him, and in the process of being excommunicated from the Mormon church, Firpo filed a complaint against the chaplain and another officer. In response, he was assigned duties working with the very same officers. A guard was stationed at his barracks, and then he was moved into a tinier room to be supervised by peers. Reduced to what he literally calls “a closet” and under constant scrutiny, Firpo broke down.

He was sent to a civilian hospital. In a throwback to an earlier era’s labels for the stress that results from isolation and cruelty, he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Even with a health-related discharge in the works, Firpo faced the added threat of military prosecution on five charges, including sodomy. “How they might have proved that is beyond me,” Firpo says. “They must just use their imaginations.” (Indeed, the charges were dropped.)

“The policy of don’t-ask, don’t-tell enforces silence. The silence creates fear, which triggers cruelty. That’s the worst torture for people who are or think they might be gay,” he says.

Turning around the chief argument of ban defenders, he adds, “It’s also an assault on unit cohesion, by forcing people to hide and be dishonest and unfamiliar.”

Looking ahead, he wants to visit his parents, who live in a small town where they fear for their own jobs, worrying that colleagues might find out about their son. Later, he wants to go back to school to get a degree in music education. “What I’ve gone through has made me patient with other people,” he says.

Little in the upbeat tone or energetic gaze of Robert Firpo suggests the battle-hardened character beneath. Maybe that’s the point. The strongest values speak in a still, small voice such that pundits and preachers alike need only hush to hear.

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• Reader Comments

  I went into the US Army at 29 a few years back to prove something to my family about my life, which was going nowhere at the time.  I eventually got out because I lied about taking anti-depressants and other psychological problems I had. 
  
  Anyway, when I was ‘in there’, I went to a Jewish Bible Study and met someone who I knew had to be gay, because his body language was so typically effeminate.  I knew if it was twenty years or so earlier, and this was the Marines, that guy might have gotten kicked out, or worse. 

  The point is, I think that kicking out gays, from anything, is wrong.  But it would surprise me even more if we were at all inclusive and accepting. 
  
  I hate what’s happening to our country.  I hate the fact that people aren’t free to believe and think what they want to.  Isn’t that what we were all taught - that (most of) our forefathers came here so they could believe what they want and act how they want?  I am a practicing Catholic, but the Bible should have no say as to what are this nation’s laws. 

  One more thing:  I know that people will write back saying that the Bible is the literal truth.  It’s not.  There.  Are you happy?  I’m not going to Hell, even if you say so.  PS, I’m straight, too.  Is this ok?

  Posted by tw on Dec 28, 2004 at 4:16 PM

  What nonsense! Why does a homosexual make it known (how else would we find out) that he wants to have sexual relations with people of the same sex, and then is offended that we consider him to be abnormal?
  Alcoholics usually try to overcome their condition through treatment, usually with the support of other alcoholics. They don’t insist that they are normal, and that we should treat them as if they are.

  Posted by Richard Partridge on Dec 28, 2004 at 10:31 PM

  Homosexuality is not a “condition”, nor is it “abnormal”. It is a state of being, different from yours and mine. I have many gay friends. None of them chose to be gay. On the contrary, none of them would have chosen it, had there been a choice. Not because it’s an abnormal condition, and not because they feel that who they are is wrong--they wouldn’t have chosen it because of the ignorance, bigotry and discrimination they have to endure. They wouldn’t have chosen it because of people like you, Richard Partridge.

  Posted by Steph (aka Peacemonger) on Dec 29, 2004 at 8:23 AM

  I guess living in a large metropolitan city has blinded me somewhat.  For me the whole gay question is moot.  Why do I care if my neighbour likes the guys instead of the girls?  It just doesn’t affect me in any way whatsoever.  So when I read things like this I get truly shocked.  Are we in the 1950s still?  Calling homosexuality “abnormal” and a “condition”?  What next? that mutual masturbation leads to pregnancy? 

  Oh wait, aren’t the cons already saying that?

  gays have as much right in the military as anybody else...if you replaced the word “gay” for “black” in any argument supporting an anti-gay stance you’d rightly be condemned as a bigot...why is it still okay to claim “moral higher ground” by being a homophobe?

  Posted by neil on Dec 29, 2004 at 12:52 PM

  Look: It’s 2004. We live in the Western World, whose culture is defined by the values of the European enlightenment.

  America is a democracy. “We hold these truths to be evident… That all men are created equal.” (Th. Jefferson—“The Declaration of Independence")

  I don’t care if someone is gay or hetero or black or white (or any tone in-between) or born-again Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or Atheist or whatever. (Or any combination thereof.) A person is a person. Full stop. What more is there to say about it?

  Nothing.

  Posted by Ben on Dec 30, 2004 at 10:02 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 12 posts.

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