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By: ERIC ERVIN
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They served their country while hiding their sexual orientation or gender identity. But on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, a contingent of gay and transgender vets will march for the second year in the Georgia Veterans Day Parade in downtown Atlanta.
As America celebrates Veterans Day, four local veterans look back on their military service during times when being openly gay was not an option, either before or after the official “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was enacted in 1993.
Michael Liebmann, 51, of Atlanta remembers the so-called “witch hunts” that took place during his military career to try and weed out service members who were gay.
Liebmann says he was the target of such investigations in 1979 while stationed at Navy Air Station Meridian in Meridian, Miss.
“What had happened is that someone left a message on my answering machine,” he says. “It was about how they were going to do things to me, and how they wanted me to do things to them. I don’t know who it was.”
Liebmann eventually got through the investigation — thanks to the advice of a superior who was a friend — with no suspension.
“He told me ‘don’t say a word,’” Liebmann says. “But I had to walk on pins and needles and basically stay under the radar.”
Liebmann was accustomed to being the underdog. He says not only did he feel like an outcast because of his sexual orientation, but because he is Jewish and didn’t exhibit the macho attitude that was the norm on base.
“I was a black sheep in a brown sheep fleet,” he says. “I wore these big coke-bottle glasses, and they also thought I was weird because I couldn’t drink.”
Liebmann says it was hard for him to meet other gay men while in Mississippi. He says the atmosphere was one of blatant discrimination toward anyone different from the majority of white Christians.
But things changed when Liebmann moved to Fort Schuyler in New York City’s Bronx borough.
“New York was big enough that I could do what I wanted away from the base,” he says. “But I just played it careful anyway.”
When Edward Scruggs served in the Army, people marched around the subject of gay service members, he says. Scruggs, who lives in Atlanta, served during the Korean War.
“All of this is pretty recent—being out,” Scruggs says. “It wasn’t something that we talked about back then.”
Scruggs says he wasn’t an activist at the time. He kept his sexual orientation a secret, just as most people did then.
“I didn’t raise my flag. It just wasn’t a big thing,” he says. “I think a lot of people just kept it to themselves. It just wasn’t a subject of discussion.”
But the 77-year-old Army veteran looks back on his military career with a smile. He says his sexual orientation was only one aspect of his life, not something that he felt the need to discuss.
Sruggs says his time in the military was a good experience. He often traveled, performing with the band.
“It was a very healthy experience, lots of exercise and the right kinds of food,” he says.
Scruggs, who is a member of the Atlanta chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, believes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will eventually be discontinued. He says his group is working to have the policy thrown out.
“I think it’s on its way out,” he says. “It’s just not being true to yourself or everyone else.”
After 12 years of living in the closet amidst constant homophobic jokes and discrimination while serving in the Air Force, Atlanta resident Sherri Boucher had enough.
She says she got out of the military “to live truthfully.”
“It’s constantly lying,” Boucher says. “I don’t know anyone who can live that way. It was living careful as a straight girl. It was more on the inside where the pain was.”
Boucher, 38, says women were pegged as lesbian just because of their appearance. Others never suspected she was a lesbian because of her feminine demeanor.
“That’s just the truth,” she says. “Unfortunately, people use looks to describe others.”
She dated men while in the Air Force, but only to keep suspicion at bay. She even came close to marrying a man, she says.
But Boucher says most of the men she dated sensed something was wrong. They would occasionally ask her if she was a lesbian, which she ...
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Michael Liebmann
Edward Scruggs
Sherri Boucher
