Being gay, being in the military: ‘You couldn’t be who you wanted to be’

He chose the Marines because his parents didn’t think he could handle it, he said, and he was a little rebellious when he was 17.

But not rebellious enough to answer the recruiter honestly.

“I can remember being asked when I went in if I was gay. And you couldn’t be gay.”

He had to keep quiet when he joined the Nebraska Army National Guard more than two decades later. He’d ended up in Lincoln, and with those eight years in the Marines, needed just a dozen more to qualify for active-duty retirement benefits.

He was almost 40 and openly gay. But now he had to be careful again, especially after moving in with his partner, John Burns.

“Everybody knew me, but they didn’t know about my private life. With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, they could ask, but only if they had suspicions. They had to have evidence, concrete stuff.”

He could finally be himself in 2011, when the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was repealed, when being gay was no longer grounds for termination from the military.

Gregory was a married man that same day. He and John wasted no time traveling to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to stand before a judge, then return to Nebraska with the same last names.

And without the need to hide publicly who they were privately.

“It felt really good,” Gregory Smith-Burns said. “I could be out and open.”

* * *

Gregory Smith-Burns retired last week after serving the National Guard full-time since 2003. The master sergeant and his husband were the first active-duty military couple in Nebraska to be married, and now they’re likely the first to retire.

He served for a total of nearly 22 years, but with a 15-year break between stints. So he can remember what it was like to wear a uniform long before the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, during a time when President Ronald Reagan declared that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”

And it was tough. He couldn’t be himself as a young Marine. Not at boot camp in San Diego, or at Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms or Okinawa.

“You couldn’t be who you wanted to be, not if you wanted a career in the military. You couldn’t date anybody or see anybody or really have any kind of romantic and meaningful life like anyone else could.”

He knew other gay Marines and he’d see them off the base, at parties or at bars.

“But the minute we were at work, they didn’t know me, they didn’t know who I was.”

The years under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell weren’t necessarily easier. Under the 1993 policy, the military stopped asking if recruits were gay, but soldiers and sailors could be kicked out if they came out.

Gregory would get to work on Mondays at Camp Ashland and listen to other soldiers talk about what they did over the weekend with their wives and families. He couldn’t share.

“I could never say my partner or my husband or my spouse; no one knew about that aspect in my life because I couldn’t talk about it. I had to watch what I said.”

But he had another life.

He met John Burns at a party in Omaha in late 2007.

“Afterward, he looked me up,” John said, “and we started chatting.”

Then they started dating. They moved in together in 2008.

John, who works on the rail car line at Kawasaki, said he understood what Gregory was facing, why his partner would look over his shoulder when they were in public, why it could be dangerous to even hold hands.

They lived like that — quietly, with their guard up — for nearly four years.

“I had already been out for years prior to that, but when you’re with someone in the military, you can’t openly express that,” John said. “You never know if you were going to see some of his fellow soldiers.”

* * *

The policy prohibiting homosexuality in the armed forces disappeared at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011.

Gregory and John were married before lunch.

They were on the front page of the newspaper the next day.

And they learned they hadn’t been as effective hiding their relationship as they thought they’d been.

“I don’t know how many phone calls I got that said, ‘Congratulations, but we always knew you were gay,’” Gregory said.

He returned to work to find hundreds of emails and a full voicemail box. He estimated 90 percent of the messages were positive, encouraging.

“And I had a couple of run-ins with higher-ups who congratulated me. I never got the feeling that any of it was not sincere.”

But there was backlash. Some soldiers accused him of seeking attention. Some said he wasn’t right in the head, and they didn’t want him showering in the same locker room.

Some even complained to his superiors, saying they couldn’t serve with Gregory — and if he didn’t go, they wanted to.

His sergeant major supported him.

« He told those people if they wanted to transfer, he would honor their request.”

And he remembers friends stepping up, telling his critics to shut up and to grow up.

Mellessa Dasenbrock served with Gregory before and after he married John. The change in her friend was remarkable, she said, a 180-degree turn.

“I saw a lot less stress. He seemed to joke around a lot more and have more fun, and he really started to enjoy his life. Before, he was really uptight, and I did tell him he was bitchy.”

She also saw the “manly men” in the Guard who were unable to accept Gregory. She’d tell them: “He’s got that right now. The military made that right.”

John’s life changed, too, in the wake of the repeal. He was eligible for benefits. More than that, though, he could play a more complete role in Gregory’s world.

“I was able to go out to the base and got to meet a bunch of people. I was able to become part of his military life, officially.”

After they were married, John was asked to serve on a panel discussion for the National Guard on LGBT issues. He said it was important to him to let people know it wasn’t just those in the military making sacrifices.

“It was actually kind of cool to be part of that, so people can know what it’s like to be the person in the relationship with the soldier, to have to be careful about who you talk to and what you do in public.”

Gregory hasn’t decided what’s next for him. He’s applying for jobs. He’s looking back at his military career, and he knows younger soldiers will never know what it’s like to have to hide who they are.

But he also knows there’s still work to be done. There are still chaplains who won’t support gay soldiers. Still progress to be made on transgender issues. Still people to convince that being gay doesn’t diminish the ability to do the job.

“Gay people are who they are. And I think everybody needs to accept people for the way they are.”