THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200457
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
For years, Margarethe Cammermeyer devoted her considerable energy and ambition to the pursuit of a single goal: to become a general and chief nurse of the Army Nurse Corps.
Along the way, she hit a life-changing roadblock.
In April 1989, during what she thought would be a routine interview to upgrade her security clearance, her interviewer asked a question about homosexuality.
Up until a few months before, this divorced 47-year-old mother of four sons would not have hesitated to affirm her heterosexuality. But now, after a long, painful odyssey to come to terms with her identity, she hesitated. There was a clutch in her throat. This was an interview for a top-secret clearance; absolute honesty was essential.
She swallowed and said, ``I am a lesbian.''
Those four words ensured that she would never reach her goal.
Now, seven years later, she has a new, overriding goal, one she has called ``the most important mission of my life:'' putting an end to discrimination against gays in the military.
Col. Cammermeyer, the highest-ranking officer ever discharged from the military for homosexuality, will talk about her life and her mission Thursday evening at Old Dominion University as part of ODU's President's Lecture Series.
Her personal battle has been won. Two years after her ouster from the Washington state National Guard in 1992, a federal judge in Seattle ruled that the military's anti-gay policy was unconstitutional and ``based solely on prejudice.'' He ordered her reinstated.
Her case predates the current ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy, under which gays are allowed to serve if they don't announce or act on their sexual preference. But she and other activists believe that government pursuit of gays is as bad if not worse under the new policy.
``It's just as discriminatory and difficult for people to live under in the military because it still puts people at risk for being harassed and pursued - even if they're not gay,'' Cammermeyer said in an interview last week. ``Especially women who may rebuff a man's advances. All he has to do is say, `Hey, that must be because you're a lesbian.' And with that, a witch hunt begins.''
A report issued last month by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said more military members were discharged for homosexuality in fiscal 1995 than in any of the previous four years. Women, who make up 13 percent of the active-duty military, accounted for 21 percent of the discharges.
A federal judge in New York City ruled last year that ``don't ask, don't tell'' is unconstitutional. The government has appealed; Cammermeyer is optimistic about the eventual outcome.
``An individual's personal characteristics are a non-issue,'' she said. ``What is an issue ultimately is how they do their job. At some point, five years from now, nobody's going to care because we are going to have a much more enlightened society and a much more confident youth because they deal with this issue of human sexuality at a much, much younger age than those of us from the old guard.
``So I think that it will ultimately become the non-issue that it should be.''
Her comfort level with her sexual identity was a long time coming for this 54-year-old grandmother.
For her, growing up in the 1950s in a conservative household of Norwegian immigrants, sex was a taboo topic. On one of the rare occasions the subject came up, she remembers her mother referring to homosexuality as a mental illness. Her father was a highly educated neuropathologist; nevertheless, he clung to the fear that hugging his sons might make them gay.
Young Margarethe, though not particularly interested in men, went through the rituals of dating. During a hitch as an Army nurse in Germany, she gave in to a persistent suitor and got married.
Devoted to her military career, she volunteered for nursing duty in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star. But because of a regulation that barred women with dependents from military service, she had to leave the Army when the couple began their family in 1968.
So she threw herself into raising her children and helping her husband build their dream house outside Seattle. She returned to the Army Reserve when the regulation was overturned in 1972.
Over the years she grew increasingly distant from her husband, to the point that she felt physically repelled.
The marriage soon dissolved in divorce. Custody of her sons was awarded to their father.
Still, she thrust to the back of her mind any thought that she might be a lesbian. ``Like the world around me, I was homophobic,'' she writes in her autobiography. ``In my ignorance, I had only negative images of them.''
Not until 1988, when mutual friends introduced her to the woman who eventually became her partner, did she come to terms with her sexuality.
She and her partner have built their dream house on an island outside Seattle where they live with their two dogs. Her youngest son joins them on his college breaks. One by one, all four sons chose to live with her as they grew up.
She has earned a doctorate in nursing and works as a clinical nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital in Tacoma, Wash., specializing in neuroscience and sleep disorders.
Her life story, ``Serving in Silence,'' was made into a TV movie last year starring Glenn Close.
Her highest ambition now, she said, is to defuse Americans' stereotypes of gays - stereotypes that she herself once harbored.
``People are so afraid of what they don't know,'' she said. ``I'm trying to put a face on a label.''
One thing that keeps her going is contact with young gays who are undergoing struggles similar to hers - searching for their sexual identity, sometimes being ostracized or persecuted by the straight world.
``There was a young man who I had been in contact with who committed suicide,'' she said. ``It was devastating. It makes it more important for those of us who are old and have been around the block to continue to speak out.''
Also painful, she said, has been the realization that the military is not the hospitable, egalitarian institution she once believed it was.
``I was extremely naive and blind to the type of harassment and abuse that women had been experiencing in the military,'' she said. ``That has made me extremely uncomfortable nowadays in recommending the military as a career option for young people. . . . That has been a revelation that I wish I'd never had.''
But on a more personal level, she is at peace. Her years of inner turmoil are over.
``I have a sense of wholeness, of love, of being motivated from within to try to do good rather than needing to, for example, have a uniform to validate my existence,'' she said. ``It's just a very peaceful place to be. If I die tomorrow, there is nothing that I would regret.''
Not even her failure to achieve her longtime goal - becoming a general.
``Last summer I was contacted by the National Guard,'' she said. ``They told me that I met the criteria to apply for the general's position, and they asked me if I wanted my records sent forward to compete.
``I laughed, and I said, `Do you know who you're speaking to?' and the fellow said, `Oh, yes, ma'am, I certainly do.' There was this flash of deja vu, and I thought, five years ago this was what I was trying to get to happen, and now they're asking me.
``And I said `No, thank you.' And that's when I realized how far I had come.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
KEYWORDS: GAYS IN THE MILITARY U.S. ARMY by CNB