Email from a gay American navy veteran

Last week, the following email arrived in my inbox:

Dear GB,

I'm sending you this email to ask for some advice. My name is Robaire Watson and I've been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for 19 years. I spent 6 years in the Navy as an openly gay military man from 1989 to 1995.

Now, I've spent the last year sending out over a 1000 emails and mailing at least 200 letters, asking gay & straight organizations, magazines and media about allowing me to tell my story. When it comes to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" I want to be the first black man to have his story told by the media. (Boy! Do I have a story to tell.)

I'm starting to feel like, since I don't look like Jake Gyllenhaal and I'm not under 30 years old or have the body of Colton Ford, they're not interested! We in the gay community have our own racial and discrimination issues. We need to be honest with ourselves and admit this is true. I'm like Rosa Parks and I refuse to sit at the back or to be thrown under the bus.

Can you advise me on how a black gay military veteran can have his story told? You can read a bit of my story by following this link?

Thank you,

The interesting thing about Robaire is that he seems to have been an out gay guy in the navy both before and after the infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was introduced, so I replied to him with a couple of ideas. One thought was to contact a media organisation that I know that focuses on gay politics, and the other idea was for him to simply start a blog and gradually post his story from one day to the next. Do any readers have any other ideas for him?

I recall that in the UK, it was during the 1990's that the ban on gay people serving in the armed forces was lifted. With so many other countries allowing it these days, the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy does make the USA look very old fashioned.

I think one of the reasons by a ban on gay people serving in the armed forces is bad is because armed forces recruit lots of guys as soon as they leave school, so it's quite likely that some guys won't have worked out that they're gay when they sign up. I imagine that the trauma of gradually realising that one is gay while in a hostile environment could be quite devastating. If it wasn't for that, I'd think that it's madness for anyone to want the right join the armed forces and hence the right to die for one's country, because that's what being in the armed forces can ultimately mean.

If all the gay guys in the American military were to 'tell' and get themselves discharged, I wonder how long it would be before the policy was changed? Just like a parent dealing with a naughty child, sometimes the best way to get what you want can be to seem to seek the opposite!