Gay army ranger returns to Yale
BY THERESE LIM, The Yale Herald, September 24, 2004
Brian Hughes, TC '05 —
formerly '00— left Yale toward the end of his senior year to join the Army Rangers.
He served in the elite unit for two years before ending his tour of duty last August.
Brian is gay. His experiences in the army, largely affected by the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, were recorded as part of a study done by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSMM).
The study concluded that being openly gay or lesbian in the military was not detrimental to unit cohesion and mission success.
It also criticized the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which it says "impairs the capacity of gay troops to develop bonds of trust, minimize stress, prepare for deployment, focus on their mission, advance professionally, and access support services..."
Brian is now back at Yale finishing his last semester. He will graduate in December 2004.
Yale Herald: Why did you decide to leave Yale near the end of your senior year to join the army?
Brian Hughes: It was the right thing at the right time. I was tired of being a student in a lot of ways and I needed something practical to focus my attention on, something challenging.
The army seemed like it would provide me with everything I needed in terms of mental and physical discipline, as well as the challenge that I was looking for.
[It was] something with immediate job satisfaction. I felt that being a student was not productive, which is a short-sighted view, but it was how I felt at that time.
In addition, I feel very strongly that military service is something that people ought to do, that it is a duty of citizenship, along with voting and jury duty and whatever else we do.
YH: What was the nature of your duties in the army? Did they entail combat?
Hughes: I guess there's a chronology to this. I signed up and volunteered for Ranger training to try and get into the Ranger regiment, which is the elite infantry unit of the army.
After basic training and airborne training I moved to the Ranger Indoctrination Program, which is essentially a three-week hell to select candidates for the Ranger battalion.
So I passed that and became a Ranger. After being in the Ranger regiment for about 8 months to a year, I went to Ranger school, which is the famous three-month course that people have heard
of — three months of plodding through mountains and swamps and whatever else Georgia has to offer.
Right after I got back from Ranger school — I finished in September of 2002
— was [when I was first deployed] to Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan for 4 months.
We were in the eastern mountain area of Afghanistan conducting patrols of various kinds, searching for personnel and
equipment — show of force patrols — and of course the base that we were on had set up a free clinic for locals who were hurt and needed medical care.
So after that, we came back to the States and almost immediately cycled into Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We started deploying for that very early in 2003. My battalion was among the first groups of people to enter Iraq.
The first time I went to Iraq [was during the] Lynch rescue. And then from Nazriye, we worked our way north into Baghdad and stayed in Baghdad for a couple of months running the same kinds of special-operations missions that we were running in Afghanistan.
In April, May, and June of this year, I went back to Afghanistan. We were over there running the same kinds of missions we were doing before.
I got back at the end of May to start out-processing to get my paperwork done to leave the army.
I left the army in June 2004 to come here for summer school. I had saved up leaves, so I took two months of leave at the end of my tour.
My final exit date from the army was Aug. 30 of this year.
YH: What was the Army culture like? Did you perceive a social stigma attached to being a homosexual in the army?
Hughes: Insofar as it was illegal to for me to [come out] as a homosexual, I'd say that there was a certain stigma attached to my sexual orientation.
But I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I can't really complain of that.
And, the social life of the Rangers is fantastic. It is the single best group of people I ever expect to work with.
Very few organizations have some kind of selection to make sure you end up with a great group of people.
Anytime you get a group of young men together — a barracks, it turns out, is quite a bit like a fraternity or perhaps a singing group or any other group of young
men — they're going to crack jokes about anything they can. The difference was, of course, that anytime I thought that somebody stepped over the line, saying something particularly misogynistic or something particularly racist, I would be able to correct them on that; whereas if they said something particularly homophobic, then naturally I didn't want to draw attention to myself.
YH: While you were at Yale, how open and accepting was the campus community of your sexuality?
How did that change when you entered the army?
Hughes: I realized I was gay when I was 19, in the middle of my freshman year, and Yale, of course, is a wonderful place to be gay.
What a great campus, very accepting. And now, it's even more than back then, now that we have the Larry Kramer [Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale].
I had absolutely no problem coming out at Yale. I didn't really agonize over it.
Whereas in the army, naturally, I wanted to keep my job so I kept it secret.
Had the policy been different and I was serving openly, would I have come out?
Yes, I think I would have, because it's that much easier to bond with people when you're not lying to them.
Yes, when we were telling stories about our sexual exploits, I could change a pronoun here or there and get by, but it would have been just as simple and I think more fun for everyone if they'd been calling me a Yalie fag and I'd been calling them Breeders.
YH: What is your opinion of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy?
Hughes: I'm firmly convinced that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is actually bad for our military and is detrimental to our national security as a result.
I think our military readiness would be much improved if we did not kick out the talent we have been losing through the policy.
The data really speak for themselves. Soldiers have been kicked out of over 161 crucial military specialties, especially the Arab linguists last year.
Right now we're hiring foreign nationals to do our Arab translations even at the level of intelligence.
That strikes me as being a very unhappy state of affairs.
YH: Some people who support this policy say that if gays were to openly come out, the cohesion of their units would be compromised and that heterosexuals wouldn't feel comfortable serving alongside homosexuals.
Based on your experiences, do you feel that is the case?
Hughes: I don't. And I don't find any evidence. We have fire departments and police departments in which gays are allowed to serve openly and there have been no reports of a lowering of morale or cohesion.
We could go to more military-oriented services, too: The FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, people who perform combat missions all the time.
Gays are allowed to serve openly in those organizations and, again, there's been no drop in morale or cohesion.
So you have a situation where homosexuals are allowed to defend the President of the United States, but they're not allowed to defend the United States, itself.
YH: Did you ever feel intimately attracted to a member of the same sex when you were in the army?
How should the army regulate homosexual behavior, if at all?
Hughes: I was never attracted to anyone in my unit because the relationship that you have is really one of brotherhood.
It's a persistent image because it's an apt one. The bond is so strong that sex certainly never got in the way of anything for me.
As to regulating homosexual behavior, yes, absolutely. Straight behavior has to be regulated in the army, too.
You can't have people getting into relationships with their commanding officers or with
anyone in their chain of command, really. It would be a huge problem, I think, for proper military order.
But there's no reason why gay sexual behavior can't be regulated in the same way.
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