As DADT ends, To expect much change from DADT end

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I just finished serving a three-year assignment at West Point, assigned to the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic, and I reveled in that assignment. Like many officers who have chosen the Army as their career, I realized that the values of the Army and the character of its soldiers are the defining aspect of greatness. I knew that what we were promoting with regard to honor and respect would make them better officers. However, at some point in those three years, I started to look inward.

Could I practice what I was preaching? Was every act from the moment I realized I was gay counter to all I had learned since I entered the Academy in 1996? I did my best to balance what I thought was most important -- the value I placed on selfless service -- with some sacrifice of my integrity in pretending I was someone I was not. I compartmentalized aspects of my life to continue to serve in the Army, keeping friends and colleagues at bay with imaginary stories or half-truths. This was not the same level of integrity that we taught the cadets each day. We taught that small, daily actions toward moral courage, honesty and respect would ultimately make cadets of stronger stock and character. I began to wonder if the small steps toward deception, dishonesty and lack of acknowledgement of my partner would have the opposite effect.

At Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Seefried works in finance, oversees a staff of 20 and is attached to the 87th Air Base Wing. Twice this year, he was set to deploy to the Middle East, and felt conflicted when his orders were canceled only because going overseas would have put J.D. Smith out of commission. A handful of friends at work know he is gay. Only one knows about OutServe, the underground network for gay military personnel he co-founded last year.

Although he expects only a fraction of the 65,000 gay men and lesbians estimated to be serving in the armed forces to reveal themselves at first, Seefried will not be alone. On Tuesday, his organization's magazine will publish an issue featuring photographs and biographies of him and 100 other gay service members. It will be available online and at Army and Air Force commissaries.

OutServe, which has grown to 4,300 members in more than 40 chapters from Alaska to Iraq, has had an exceptionally aggressive rise since its February 2010 launch. From the start, Seefried and a tech-savvy civilian friend, Ty Walrod, saw its mission as two-fold: to ease the isolation of gay service members and to educate the public about the price of requiring them to serve in silence.

They set up a private Facebook group for gay personnel, starting with a handful of Seefried's friends. Each new recruit was allowed to nominate others for membership — and the group grew.

The organization also seized the chance to exercise a unique niche as the voice of gays in the military after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed a working group to study the ramifications of a potential repeal.

OutServe released an open letter to Gates stating that the working group's research would be flawed as long as it lacked a conduit to gays with boots on the ground. While the ban on openly gay service remained in effect, the Pentagon acknowledged, active duty gay and lesbian troops could not be part of the conversations.

At West Point, Chief of Staff Col. Charles Stafford noted that cadets must already adhere to strict rules of behavior that demand respect for others.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy's leaders are welcoming the repeal, a change that could draw even more of the nation's best and smartest teens to apply at the Connecticut academy, its superintendent said.

Rear Adm. Sandra Stosz, who oversees more than 1,000 cadets and the academy's commissioned and civilian employees, said she expects very little to change on campus. But in one small change, she said non-roommates of the same gender will have to keep their barracks doors open when they study together, just as opposite-gender cadets currently do — to ensure that the policy is fairly applied.