For those of us who are lgbt and who also have worn or now wear the nation’s uniform those choices can be far more daunting. The relief afforded by the end of DADT is palpable, but should not be taken as the final necessary accomplishment, as we continue to explore this new territory both within the Armed Forces, within our circle of friends and family, and within ourselves. I know of no other population segment in our society which is called on together and individually to find and then to deploy the depth of thought and the degree of personal courage needed to face such decisions.

My ten years in the Navy required much thought and some courage. Nobody who serves on a submarine in the essentially hostile environment of undersea deployment can forget how they felt and how they coped with the jitters associated with their first dive, no matter how many times their boat had accomplished this maneuver and no matter how blase their more experienced shipmates seemed to them at the thought of prepping for the next dive.

But nothing compared to the struggle of coming out to my father in the spring of 1990 when, as a vet who was about to graduate magna cum laude from Norwich University in Vermont (America’s oldest military college) as its’ first openly gay grad I had to come out to Dad. I was out to everyone at that time, except Dad. I had been heavily involved for seven years in the effort to pass Vermont’s civil rights legislation, and everyone around me knew I was gay and had found a life-partner while in the Navy. Except Dad.

That Dad must have suspected, or perhaps even had made a factual observation or conclusion was something I considered. Since Tim and I met (29 years ago now) he’d been a frequent visitor in our home, even while we were on active duty and stationed together, but especially since we left the Service, bought a home in Vermont and were obviously a couple to anyone who had eyes to see. But saying something – making that leap – putting it right out there was different.

It was also necessary. Life on campus was a constant battle against bigotry and sometimes just raw hate. I had received an anonymous note from persons claiming to be my classmates threatening me if I dared to attend Commencement. Honestly, my thoughts were that I’d be damned if I’d knuckle under to that kind of threat because I busted my ass, academically and otherwise, to earn that degree and the right to accept it at Commencement.

But Dad would be attending, so I had to prepare, and be prepared for a possible incident.

After everything else I’d faced up to that point, being gay in the Navy (like many others I was quite ‘out’ to many of my shipmates but the threat was always there – I’d been investigated once and it was a passage through hell), being gay in our society, having friends and acquaintances beaten up and, in three instances beaten to death for being gay, and then the early years of the AIDS epidemic where a positive HIV status was still a death sentence, you’d think that coming out to my father might not have been such a fearful thought. Mom (my parents were long divorced and were not in contact with each other) knew – she found out when I was in high school and reacted horribly (my step-father beat me up and I got thrown out of the house). I’d been thrown out of my church when I came out to my minister, who refused to pray for my best friend when he was dying of AIDS. (This happened when I was still on active duty, making it terribly hard to find the means to cope, and to mourn when that friend and far, far too many others died.)

It would be unwise, I think, to believe that those kinds of responses and rejections did not color my thoughts as I contemplated how to come out to Dad. The simple act itself, of just telling him, made all your comments about rehearsing the words more than familiar. And I had a hard deadline – I had to do it before Commencement.

I put it off and put it off until late in the spring of ’90. Nobody helped by postponing graduation day. My postponing could only go on for so long. Finally, Dad invited me to meet him upstate New York for a fishing trip a few weeks before Commencement and I knew I’d have no other chance. I planned and planned, thinking I’d meet him, do some fishing and get it over with. When that weekend arrived I drove from Vermont to New York and spent the entire weekend totally crazy, and let the clock run out. It was already two hours after the time I knew I had to head home when I finally told him I needed to talk with him, and did the deed. He took it much better than I thought possible, and as I left and drove home, aside from having to stop every ten minutes and pee in relief, it was a happy time.

I never told Dad or anyone else except Tim (my hubby) that I had active duty and former military friends there on Commencement Day, who willingly, but unnecessarily as it turned out, served as bodyguards for my family in case something happened. When I accepted my diploma some members of the faculty were very vocal, cheering and applauding. I don’t know if it was because I graduated so high in my class, or because they, at least some of them, knew how much I had to struggle to keep my head on straight in a frequently hostile campus environment. I know it was the latter for at least a few of them.

We should not have to struggle for something so ordinary as to be accepted as who and what we are. But we sometimes do. When our elders told us in grade school that fairness in life would be something we could rely on as we grew older they were shielding us from some hard truths. It isn’t always fair, and it isn’t always good. And there is love, and there is unlove. But that’s life. That’s why when we find fairness, when we find goodness we are so very, very much entitled to savor it, as we must. And love needs no explanation or defense. Only unlove does.

Not everyone has a positive experience in coming out. Not everyone finds the love of their life. Not everyone is healthy, or happy or secure. And so we work, and the effort goes on. I think it’s called life.

Those of us who have known the fear of not being accepted as who we are – for whatever reason – have this cause to pursue. And pursuing it, to make a better world for everyone else around us and who is to come after us is what molds and strengthens our selves and our character for the days ahead. And we find kindred souls, and often from that effort, we find the happiness and the security and the love that sustains us.

It strikes me as apt that those of us who have chosen to serve this nation are also so purposefully prepared and appropriately placed to serve that part of the nation – it’s collective character – which is completely aside from it’s physical defense. I watch the contentiousness of present political life and cannot help but note how sadly many people there are, including some who pose as leaders, who say nice things but whose actions demonstrate that they do not really wish to share our nation with people they see as different from them. And then I see the kinds of people, people like those who make up OutServe and I am made strong and proud to know that our goal is to create and maintain a strong nation in which the fundamental purpose is to share it and its’ blessings with all others, no matter who and what they are. Common purpose, and common life with such people gives the strength that sustains.

It is hard sometimes, to make the leap of faith that coming out represents. When one considers, though, the costs of not coming out, of not offering the clear and enduring message and the inescapable imperative of inclusive life, or the energies and time spent concealing simple and really rather ordinary truths about the variety of life, it is much, much costlier and harder not to come out.

So often we find that the people around us react to us based, at least in part, on the cues they receive from us. When you have accepted your own self exactly as you find it to be, then at least two good things will happen: 1) You will have already found the strength to sustain yourself no matter how the people around you respond – you only have to look within to see it there for your use; and 2) more often than not when you have your head on straight about who you are and what you’re all about, nearly everyone else, since most people are good people, will take your presence as exactly who you are at face value and move ahead with it, even if slowly at first.

That’s one of many reasons why sharing your coming out story is so critically important. It’s proof that no matter how afraid we might have been to do so, the overwhelming majority of us have made it through that process and are free now to live our lives as they need to be lived: openly, honestly, and without all the stupid encumbrances which cost us so much that they sap our strength for the real tasks of importance: life, love, and keeping this whole shebang moving in the right direction.

Which is ahead.

So my wish for you is that you go from strength to strength. Ahead.