A Year On, Marines Divided on Repeal of \'Don\'t Ask, Don\'t Tell\"

By THOMAS J. BRENNAN

After Marine Corps Recruit Training, Chase Davis, from Leesburg, Ga., was living a lie. He had developed a friendship with a Marine named Jackie and they had become inseparable during their first months of training. She was the only one he trusted and he confided his secret to her. He is gay.

Two years passed before Davis, now a 24-year old corporal, told other Marines his secret. At work he would tell stories of weekend parties with girls. Hiding his sexuality, he even fabricated an engagement. In 2010, eight months before the repeal of the Clinton-era law law known as “don't ask, don't tell,” the corporal one by one told his colleagues his secret. “My fellow Marines are family,” he said. “You don't lie to family.”

Before the repeal, homosexuality was the elephant in the room, Corporal Davis said; everyone noticed it and knew it was going on, but no one talked about it or even mentioned it. “I refuse d to tell my leaders,” he said. “They held my career in their hands.”

Now that the ban has been repealed, “my homosexuality is not a big issue with the people I work with,” Corporal Davis said. “I can be myself, not worrying about losing my career.”

Bringing his boyfriend around fellow Marines, once a dream, is now a reality. “They accept us fully because I share the uniform and because we are not ashamed of ourselves.”

Though he sees room for improvements in certain Pentagon policies, such as extending health care benefits to same-sex partners and recognizing gay marriages, Corporal Chase feels that, “Overall the repeal has been a success.”

The “don't ask, don't tell” law, established in 1993 under President Clinton, allowed gay and lesbian service members to serve provided they did not publicly acknowledge their sexuality â€" a policy put in place to deter troops from being asked or coming forward about their sexuality. It was repealed last September.

Until its repeal, service members who were open about their sexuality or found to be gay were subject to discharge. Suspicion of homosexuality lead to investigations - with officials prying into people's personal lives.

The repeal of the policy has been one of the most controversial issues for the military in recent years. Sensitivity training before its implementation became mandatory, with general officers addressing their ranks in preparation.

Despite such training, service members expressed opposition to the repeal. With “more than enough stressors and dangers for young men that are risking their lives daily, why, if you care about the military, would you make it so much more difficult?” said Matthew Thomas, a Marine from Washington. Corporal Thomas says that sexuality is too controversial an issue and has no room on the battlefield.

Lance Cpl. Chris Cavey of Baton Rouge, La., who deployed to Afghanistan with an op enly gay Marine in 2012, said, “It was probably one of the worst decisions in military history. It makes everything more awkward and tense than it has to be.” Lance Corporal Cavey's opinion is based on his religious views. But he said his view was also colored by what he considered unprofessional comments and actions by the gay Marine in his squad. He added that serving abroad in the infantry was stressful enough, with fear of gunfire and improvised explosive devices, without adding the additional complication of openly gay Marines in his unit.

Unlike Lance Corporal Cavey, some Marines do not see it as problem. “As long as you can do your job effectively and efficiently then it doesn't matter” said Phil Barker, a Marine from Manchester, N.H. Mr. Barker said negative feelings toward gay and lesbian service members were “born of ignorance and stupidity.” He added, “They're just another service member trying to serve.”

In preparing this article, I in terviewed 20 active duty service members, both officers and enlisted. Eight were strongly against gays serving openly. The other twelve welcomed gays serving openly. “The issue is not with the homosexual, but with the heterosexuals surrounding him,” said Lance Cpl. Jon Albert, an infantry Marine from Greenville, S.C. “Half the guys are fine with him and the other half secretly despise him,” he said. Though he is fine serving alongside openly gay Marines, he felt that unit cohesion had declined since the repeal.

Lance Corporal Albert further said that the issue has in some cases created a divide in platoons and squads. “Some Marines are being ostracized for their sexuality. It's a personal choice that shouldn't affect work, but it does.”

While many found that while people were O.K. with gays serving, even supporters of the repeal struggled with public displays of affection among gay service members. “I don't want to see two men or women kissing in un iform,” said Lance Cpl. Jose Magdaleno, a Florida Marine. “But as long as it doesn't interfere with the persons' job or duty to their country, I don't mind” them serving. Lance Corporal Magdaleno added that a recent gay wedding at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst had upset him.

“Public displays of affection for straight or gay service members shouldn't be allowed in uniform,” he said. “Its unprofessional and uncalled for.”

Cpl. Cheyenne L. Stewart, 23, from Jacksonville, Tex., has been serving since before the repeal. “Prior to the repeal, lesbians were somewhat accepted while gay men were getting verbally and physically assaulted for their sexuality,” she said. This double standard is something, Corporal Stewart said, is still rampant in the corps, as is “gay bashing” in private.

Upon the repeal Corporal Stewart came out to her peers and superiors. “I get weird glances from time to time,” she said. “But I can be myself. I don't have to hide.” But she acknowledged that some gay and lesbian Marines say they feel as though they still need to hide. “People aren't open-minded,” she said. “People hear the threats made towards gays and fear coming out.”

But the repeal has caused service members to be more careful about how they talk about sexuality in the workplace, Corporal Stewart said, and she considers that an improvement. “People are more aware of what they are saying and to whom,” she said. “It makes for a better work atmosphere. In my eyes the repeal has been a success.”

Still, some Marines, fearing persecution, feel they cannot be honest about who they are.

I have served in the Marine Corps infantry since 2003 and have experienced both policies in action. At times I was surrounded by investigations of Marines and sailors in my unit suspected of being gay. Those service members were forced to live in separate rooms until they were discharged. This created a divid e in the unit, giving heterosexual troops another reason to shun gays. Inappropriate comments and jokes were rampant, driving the unit even farther apart.

Homosexuals became the subject of jokes. I'm ashamed to admit now that as a young Marine I was easily influenced by peer pressure and the anti-gay atmosphere. I took part in those hurtful jokes. I had little sympathy at the time when a gay Navy corpsman attempted suicide because of the hostile atmosphere over his sexuality. I have since grown and I have realized that such backwards attitudes don't help anyone. My hope is that the Marine Corps as a whole can undergo a similar shift in collective thinking.

But since the repeal, it often feels as if little has changed in the infantry. During sensitivity training in 2010, things were still a laughing matter. Jokes are still rampant, from leaders to subordinates. Suspicion of being gay will lead a person to be segregated. In a world of alpha males, homosexuality is seen as a weakness. Gays are often forced to shower alone in field settings where group showers are common. I have yet to see a climate safe enough in the infantry for homosexuals to reveal their sexuality.

A Marine corporal, currently serving in the infantry at Camp Lejeune and who asked not to be identified, said he felt that acceptance has not spread to the combat arms side of the Marine Corps. His fears are so strong that he avoids contact with homosexual friends dreading that assumptions will be made. “I'm all alone,” the corporal said. “Being gay doesn't fall into others views of the corps' warrior ethos. I don't want to be the one to pave the way.”

He tells tales of gay jokes, derogatory comments and negative treatment of past gay comrades. “Being gay isn't accepted in the infantry,” he said. You learn to live a lie. He tells stories about fake girlfriends, the lies are taking a mental and emotional toll. “If people knew I was gay, their opin ions would affect my promotions,” he said. “The repeal has done nothing to help me yet.”

“Things will get better,” he said. But he added, “No amount of legislation from the Department of Defense can make it safe for me to come out now.”

Thomas J. Brennan is a Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served both in Iraq and Afghanistan with the First Battalion Eighth Marines. Now, 27 and still on active duty, he is stationed at Camp Lejeune in
North Carolina. Brennan is a member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Syria\'s Army, Prepared for Outside Aggressors, Strains Under Civil War

By JEFFERY DELVISCIO

C.J. Chivers takes up a growing issue for the military of President Bashar al-Assad: troops have weapons that do not match well with the civil war they are now fighting. The weapons that the Syrian Army has used to project military dominance, like the attack helicopter shown in the video below targeting a building with high-explosive rockets, are a dwindling asset.

Mr. Chivers writes:

Analysts said Syria's fleet of Mi-25 Hind-D attack helicopters, which numbered 36 at the start of the conflict, is insufficient to hold back rebels as the number of fronts, from Aleppo and Idlib in the north to the suburbs of Damascus in the south and Hama and Homs in the center of the country, continues to proliferate.

Maintenance technicians are struggling to keep the machines aloft in an intense campaign and in the searing heat and sand associated with summer desert war. Estimates are that only half his fleet can be used at a given time, with some helicopters cannibalized for spare parts and Mr. Assad dependent on supplies from Russia.

The government certainly has other tools at its disposal. It has ground-attack jets.

There's also some evidence that government troops are using cluster-type munitions in their air attacks.

But the rebel arsenal is getting more sophisticated and better able to target helicopters. The use of improvised explosives by the rebels is increasing, threatening the government's heavy ground forces. And fighting a summer desert war is taking a toll on all the government's heavy weaponry. This could make the army less potent and in some cases make the weapons themselves more of a liability than an asset as the civil war rages on.

Project Basement: Which TV?

By ROY FURCHGOTT

When I finally caved in and decided to replace my old tube television with a modern high definition set, Decision No. 1 was, what kind? Plasma or LCD? What size?

When I renovated my house about a dozen years ago, I turned a windowless basement into a TV room. After installing bookshelves across the front wall (where the TV would be), the room measured about 12 feet wide by 10 feet deep.

In the interest of saving money (always of interest), I treated the room acoustically with the help of Lew Lipnick, who holds twin jobs as an acoustician and as contrabassoonist for the National Symphony Orchestra.

His good advice was to put up a couple of thousand dollars of acoustic panels to make the room acoustically right â€" not too lively, not too dead. Then I wouldn't have to spend a lot on high end equipment and equalizers to compensate for the room's sonic problems. Covering the walls at ear level and a section of ceil ing with RPG BAD Diffsorber panels was a huge improvement.

Back then picking the right size TV was based on a mathematical formula calculated by how far away you would sit. If the screen was too large for the distance, the lines on the screen would be too apparent. But in the age of 1080p resolution, all of that is out the window. Sit as close as you want, there are no lines. And who ever said, “The TV is too big.” So I settled on replacing my 36-inch cathode ray tube TV with a 50-inch set, the largest size that would fit neatly in the existing cabinet. (It's funny how often cabinets can dictate the size of TV one wants.)

TV's come in basically two flavors at the moment, LED-LCD and plasma. The LED-LCDs are usually better in bright rooms, for their ability to produce blazingly vivid pictures, but the blacks aren't as rich as on plasma, and LED-LCDs can be susceptible to blurring when there is a lot of motion onscreen.

I have a windowless room, so I deci ded to go for a plasma TV, which is also often cheaper for the same size TV. I looked at a lot of TVs, but was swayed by some installers who uniformly said to get a Panasonic 3-D plasma â€" and not because it was 3-D.

Few of the signals that come into your TV are 1080p, which means a processor has to interpret the lower quality signal then resize it. But the more processing you ask your equipment to do, the bigger the chance you'll get errors. Those errors show up as checkerboarding, which are those blocks you see when video goes bad, as well as other visual goofs the trade lumps under the heading artifacts. The advantage of 3-D TV's is that they need to have twice the processing power of a 2-D set. So even your 2-D pictures are likely to look better on a 3-D set.

I wanted to go whole hog on the top-of-the-line Panasonic VT model, which had the highest grade processing and filtering and the screen was flat glass without a frame around it. But since it only came i n 55-inches and over, I went with the next line down the GT model, TC-P50GT50, which I bought for $1,500 from Amazon (a price lower than the employee pricing at Panasonic, an employee told me).

But the installation would create as many problems as it solved. For that, drop in next week. In the meantime, did I make the right decision? Go ahead and second guess me in the Comments section. It may help others.

App Smart Extra: More Theme Parks

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

This week's App Smart column was about theme park apps that try to give you useful information on more than one theme park at a time. These apps can be pretty useful, but there are many more theme parks than the ones listed in the apps.

In fact there are thousands of parks all around the world, and many of them have their own apps listed in Android and iOS app stores. That's because as well as official apps there are often third party apps that promise to help you find your way around the parks or avoid long waits in lines for the attractions.

A great example of an official app is the official Sea World app, which is free on iOS and Android. It has detailed data on all three SeaWorld parks (which is individually downloaded, so try to do this at home or over a Wi-fi connection beforehand). Along with detailed maps, it has an interactive search engine, proper GPS-like navigation and up to date wait times for each at traction. There's also neat in-app photo button, so you can quickly snap a picture of something happening without leaving the app. And the app will even help you find your car in the giant lot at the end of the day.

In terms of unofficial apps, the iOS app Disneyland Paris Maps is a great example. It's available free in an adverting-supported edition. It contains simplified maps of Disney's attractions. Zooming into each map gives you data on the attractions nearby as well as cafes and restrooms. The same company makes an app called Disneyland Paris Wait Times, which costs $1, and which tells you how long you'll have to wait to get into individual attractions. You can also submit wait alerts yourself.

Like most things relating to a theme park trip, choosing an app to help your visit is a process that benefits from a little pre-planning. A quick search through iTunes or Google Play will reveal the apps that promise to help you with each park. Many are available a s free ad-supported editions. Try them out, then consider if paying for the full app will make your visit to the theme park a little smoother.

Tip of the Week: Doing Math in Windows 7

By J.D. BIERSDORFER

Adding mathematical equations to Microsoft Word can be an exercise in frustration, as many of the symbols used in the notation can be hard to find on the keyboard. Thanks to the Math Input Panel in Windows 7, the mathematical expressions can be written by hand with a mouse, digitizer pen or touch screen, converted to text and easily inserted into a Microsoft Word document - or any other program that supports Mathematical Markup Language.

To find the Math Input Panel, type “math input” in the search box on the Windows 7 Start menu. You can also get there from the Start menu: Go to All Programs, to the Accessories folder, and select Math Input Panel. When the program opens, write the needed math expression into the lower part of the box.

The preview area at the top of the box shows the converted handwriting as text. You can make corrections if needed, and when the converted text is correct, click the Insert button at the bottom of the box to insert the expression into an open Word document. Microsoft has illustrated instructions for using the Math Input Panel on its site.

As the Wars Ebb, Considering Security at Home

By JEFFERY DELVISCIO

On At War, we mostly deal with military engagements aboard, rather than national security issues on the home front. But we want to point out a piece by At War contributor Scott Shane (@ScottShaneNYT) on The Agenda. Mr. Shane writes today about the trade-offs between security and civil liberties going into the presidential campaign. The fallout from 9/11 saw a monumental shift both in the way the government approached counterterrorism domestically, and how it executed it internationally through Iraq and Afghanistan. But the United States has, mostly, withdrawn from Iraq. And the exit from Afghanistan, though its speed will surely be an issue of debate in the campaign, is no doubt hastening.

The presidential campaign is taking place at the diminuendo of the country's large-scale war effort. And the memory of the terrorist attack on American soil has grown dimmer in the national memory over the last decade. The question bec omes this: What sacrifices are Americans still willing to make in the name of national security? As Mr. Shane puts it, “Does more liberty necessarily mean less security, and vice versa?”

He asked readers this question, and they responded.

It's a lively debate. You can join it here.

And you can find Scott Shane's original Agenda post on the subject here.

In War, Moments Worth Remembering

By NATHAN S. WEBSTER

Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990; hard to believe there were any good days in the two decades since. How could there be? I have told my war stories both as an embedded journalist and an Army veteran of Desert Storm. When I say “Iraq,” it is only violence that is remembered.

Robert Frost could have written his poem, “Acquainted with the Night” about these conflicts, and the recent veteran's experience. “I have walked out in rain - and back in rain/ I have looked down the saddest city lane,” Frost wrote. “I have passed by the watchmen on his beat/ And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

Maybe not unwilling, but it is difficult for these new veterans' complete memories to compete against ever-righteous narratives of established expectation and assumptions.

Like Chad SeBour, 26, said about his 2006-07 deployment to Bayji, Iraq, with the 82nd Airborne, “I only talk about civilian stuff wit h my friends; they have their own picture of how it's like over there. They're only going to look at Iraq as a bad thing.”

Kris Vasquez, another 26-year-old veteran of two deployments who is a college student now, tries to shrug off negative stereotypes.

“Society likes to put labels,” Mr. Vazquez said. “I don't have a vendetta of trying to prove people wrong, I just move forward and try to look positively at life. That's my ambition.”

But why should an audience of home-front civilians expect anything but damage and bad memories? Iraq's horror and tragedy was not melodrama - it was real life. It is what happened.

So it is difficult, to try and remind a reader that for many recent veterans these wars cover much more ground than post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury. It can be hard to tease out a few fonder moments.

In June 2009, I talked with Sgt. Vasquez in a Combat Outpost Cahill guard tower. In both 2007 and 2009, I embedded with his unit: Charlie Company, 1st/505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.

We chatted about food - how the mess hall's morning eggs were always lumpy and undercooked, the dinner's ‘steak' burned to a hard hockey puck. Snacks were more dependable. I preferred Pop-Tarts; Kris hoped for Gatorade shakes, but other soldiers snatched them up, taking more than their fair share.

That selfishness was not new. During the 2007 deployment, Kris remembered grabbing a half-dozen sticky-sweet Honey Buns at a time, stuffing them into his assault pack for long days in a Humvee. Charlie Company's men earned their share of legitimate bad memories that year - three men killed over 15 months, others injured, their Bayji Joint Security Station attacked by a suicide truck bomb that killed two dozen Iraqi policemen.

In 2009's quiet, Sgt. Vasquez happily reminisced about hoarded snacks.

“I look at Honey Buns now,” he laughed in the guard tower, “a nd I don't touch them. They're dead to me.”

Out of the Army since 2011, Mr. Vasquez currently studies criminal justice at Palomar Community College in San Marcos, Calif., not far from his hometown, El Centro. He has about two semesters left there before a planned transfer to California State University, San Marcos, with a long-term career goal of federal law enforcement. With its proximity to Marine bases, plenty of veterans attend Palomar, Mr. Vasquez said, and his own past comes up.

“All the great stories I have are from the Army,” he said. “In class introductions, they ask what interesting things you've done - I've jumped out of an airplane. That's pretty interesting.”

Years later, Mr. Vazquez still remembers the Honey Buns and still has not eaten another.

“They're not a bad memory, but now they remind me of a time when Honey Buns were all I ate,” he said. “That time was long enough.”

Myself, I still enjoy pecan pie â€" but I think of Iraq with every bite, of meals at the huge Forward Operating Base dining facilities that were a gift at the end of my reporting trips. Pecan pie is not sugar and nuts â€" pecan pie is relief.

In mom-and-pop convenience stores around Palomar's campus, Mr. Vasquez sometimes sees cans of the high-sugar, high-caffeine Rip-It energy drink for sale, cheaper than Red Bull or Monster.

“I tell people I drank them in Iraq, and they say ‘Weren't you worried about dehydration?' like energy drinks were bad for us,” Mr. Vasquez said; but that misses the point, like telling me pecan pie will rot my teeth.

“Rip-Its were kind of a symbolic beer before a mission,” he said. “Everybody's nervous, but we weren't in any great danger or bad circumstances. We'd drink a few and laugh and talk a little bit.

“They remind me of that camaraderie, the people that I knew, the experience we went through.”

In Baltimore, Mr. SeBour now works as an inve stigator for Commercial Index Bureau; he sits for hours in a car, looking for proof of cheating spouses, or phony disability claims. His experience as a mortar crewman taught him patience; in Bayji, he would sit by the mortar emplacement on the Joint Security Station's roof, spending shifts that lasted hours waiting for something to happen.

“Readjustment's not that easy. I probably think about Iraq every 20 minutes. Like it was yesterday. Like it was 10 seconds ago,” he said. Post-traumatic stress is no joke; whether it is night sweats, or loud noises, he said there is plenty to keep him on edge. But, “even the bad stuff, it was bad, but it wasn't that bad,” he said. “I kind of miss it, as long as nobody was getting hurt.”

Thanks to Mr. SeBour's post-deployment brawling, drinking and fighting, he left the Army in 2008 the way he came in - honorably, but still a stripe-less private. “I'm not proud of that at all,” he says. Still, you cannot look ba ck in bitterness. “I'm very glad I joined. Wouldn't get rid of it for anything.”

Private SeBour and I were both on the Joint Security Station roof on July 29, 2007, a strange day - lots and lots of gunfire, but no violence. The Iraqi national soccer team won the Asian Cup championship, 1-0 over Saudi Arabia. It seemed everyone in the city fired celebratory gunshots into the air.

The sports connection's stuck with Mr. SeBour - back home, watching a Steelers-Ravens football game with his parents, his father started in about the Steelers' rabid fan base - Mr. SeBour responded, “You should see Iraqi soccer fans.” His father laughed, but “it was sort of an awkward laugh,” he said.

Anyway, the soccer game's not the important memory, or the Rip-Its, or the Honey Buns.

“Everybody was kind of quiet,” while the Iraqis shot off thousands of rounds; Mr. SeBour paid attention for security's sake, but paid equal attention to a bigger moment he was w itnessing. “It was one of those times, you see something awesome,” he said. “Who else gets to be part of that?”

Even with Iraq still full of violence, I like to imagine men in Bayji today. I hope they sit around tables of chai tea and remember that 2007 soccer victory; remember in the way that “Johnny,” a Tikrit-born interpreter, had told me back then, excited in a roomful of unimpressed Americans watching the televised celebration - “I wished for us to win, to show the world what Iraq can do.”

Like America's veterans, those Iraqis might - sometimes, definitely not always - be like the Vietnamese that Michael Herr wrote about in “Dispatches,” an answer of sorts to Robert Frost's bleak silence:

“I knew that somewhere that night and every night there'd be people sitting together over there talking about the bad old days of jubilee and that one of them would remember and say, Yes, never mind, there were some nice ones, too.”

Natha n S. Webster, an Army veteran of Desert Storm, is an adjunct instructor of first-year writing and creative nonfiction at the University of New Hampshire. His photography is part of the “Conflict Zone” exhibition, and his book “Can't Give This War Away: Three Iraqi Summers of Change and Conflict” is available from Blurb and as an e-book on Amazon. Follow his blog at “Can't Give This War Away” and on Twitter at @nwembed.