tlashop.com

Amos Lassen wrote on 05/23/2011:

For years now the University of Wisconsin Press has published gay and lesbian autobiographies under their Living Out series. The newest addition is one of supreme relevance to us now with so much going on about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. We finally have an eyewitness account of a gay man at war in Iraq and it comes none too soon.

Bronson Lemer served for five and a half years in the North Dakota National Guard Engineer Unit as a carpenter. Just as he was ready to leave the military life he was deployed for a yearlong tour of Iraq (he only had six months left to serve). Lemer is a gay man and was ready to begin his civilian life but he, as an American, felt his obligation to his country and so he shut up and used his father’s example to be a man and went with his mouth closed.

As a former military man myself (the Israel Defense Forces), I know the strain that service can put on someone especially in wartime. Even though Israel has no policy about gays serving, we all know to keep silent and not expose our sexuality to others. In wartime, one must be much more careful as quarters are tighter and human interaction is much more prevalent.

Here is the story of a young man, a soldier who must dealing with not only accepting himself and find out where he belongs in the world but who also has to serve his country during a war on foreign turf. Many of us would fold if this faced us. He decided that it was his job to prove to both himself and others that he could serve as a soldier as a gay man and that his sexuality had nothing to do with his masculinity. There were sacrifices and friendships and alliances to be made and there was the personal anxiety of being gay in a heterosexual world (during wartime).

It is one thing to live on a military base with men who tell jokes about homosexuals while trying to understand how to come to terms with one’s own sexuality. It is just as difficult to face the enemy and I imagine that sometimes Lemer felt as if he was standing in front of a firing squad. In closed quarters every world must be weighed, every movement must be planned so as not to cause waves. More important than anything else here is that we get a firsthand look at what gay and lesbian service people face when they are forced to hide who they are. I cannot imagine that pain even though I lived through it.

This is such an important book and we owe Bronson Lemer a great deal for having written it. We see the results of what “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has done to the morale of those who give of themselves to serve their country. If you have ever wondered exactly what “DADT” entails, you will find it here. You will also find so much more and if you are like me, you will want to meet Bronson Lemer and give a hug. He not only represented his country, he represented the entire GLBT community in a way few others have been able to do. In doing so, he has become one of our heroes. And he has written a wonderful book about it that needs to be in every library of every person who cares about who he is.