♪♪
[ Gunfire ]
-Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas! -Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas!
♪♪
-I'm definitely living proof that there is no reason
that HIV should restrict me.
That I can do just the same thing
that everybody else can do out here in the military.
And I think that the more people within the military see this,
the more people outside of the military see this,
that I'm HIV positive and I'm capable of doing
just as much as everybody else.
♪♪
I was deployed to Afghanistan in '06 and '07
and then to Kuwait and Iraq in '11 and '12,
and I think a lot of what they see here
is that there's a lot of waiting,
there's a lot of, sort of, downtime.
And then whenever things happen,
they actually happen very quickly.
♪♪
What you're seeing right now
is that they're doing the actions on the objective.
You have one squad that is just sort of pushed through
and assaulted first,
and then you have the second one that came in
and did sort of like a little shake.
[ Gunfire ]
♪♪
I'm First Lieutenant Nick Harrison.
I just received my commission as a First Lieutenant
in the Army earlier this year, and I'm going through the direct
commissioning course at Fort Moore.
I'm definitely a case setting or an example of somebody
coming from a disadvantaged background
and using the military to sort of become more socially mobile
and become part of a better society
and live the American dream.
My mother was a single mother on public assistance,
and I probably would not have had the opportunity
to attend college and to go into law school.
I was the first in my family to graduate
from college with a bachelor's degree.
And all of that was because of the military benefits
that I received, as well as the training
and the experience that I received in the military.
-The goal of DCC, once they complete the course,
is that they're now a commissioned officer
and they know the foundations of being a soldier.
So what you're going to see today --
it's called STX Lanes, Situational Training Exercises.
So they get a day of training specifically on weapons,
radios, and camouflage, and throughout the course,
they receive small blocks of instruction on tactics.
And then they will come out here and just demonstrate that.
They will do what's called a movement to contact,
where they move through the woods,
they take contact from the OPFOR, which is the enemy,
and then they will conduct a squad attack.
♪♪
So Lieutenant Harrison's performance during this course
has been awesome.
There's not a single negative thing to say.
He's been in the National Guard, he's been deployed before,
he was prior service infantry.
So this stuff just comes naturally to him.
He's used to it. He's a natural leader in this course.
Lieutenant Harrison's performance
due to the fact that he's living with
HIV has not affected his performance at all.
Lieutenant Harrison's injury.
Yesterday, the students were conducting
individual movement techniques.
They were learning how to do low crawls,
high crawls, buddy team rushes,
which is to get up and move as a battle buddy team
and then get down real quick within three to five seconds.
And during a low crawl,
unfortunately, Lieutenant Harrison --
as he was moving, he ended up dislocating his kneecap.
And so we had to get him medivac'd out of here
to the hospital in order to get him fixed up.
But within 12 hours he was back with the class.
He's in a knee brace and he's good to continue training.
An injury does not stop you.
Lieutenant Harrison will complete the course.
-Down to one mag.
Good on water. I'm not shot. I've got all my equipment.
♪♪
-I definitely think that we have a pretty close
and tight-knit group.
One of the beautiful things about DCC
is that we are the first faces we see in the morning
and the last faces we see at night.
And so, like, we spend almost every waking hour together.
And it's a lot of growing, learning,
and just bonding together.
And, I don't know, I couldn't ask for a better group.
I enjoy all of you guys and I'm looking forward to finishing up
and seeing you guys in Charlottesville.
-Normally, this would make us really nervous.
If that came in with a bunch of First Lieutenants,
we'd be standing at attention, but --
-But here we're all --
we're all students, so no saluting me.
[ Gunshots ]
-First Lieutenant Dan Hillshafer
of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
-First Lieutenant Shane Broadstone, Fort Myers, Florida.
-First Lieutenant Don Deckert.
I grew up in Tifton, Georgia, and I live in Chicago.
-Major Jorge Albida from Guano, Puerto Rico.
-First Lieutenant Mike Clancy, Mahopac, New York.
-First Lieutenant Nick Harrison, Washington, D.C.
-First Lieutenant John Bradley, Wetumpka, Alabama.
-First Lieutenant Colby Cook, Kansas City, Missouri.
-First Lieutenant Brett Deal, San Diego, California.
-First Lieutenant Julius Ritman,
Fayetteville, North Carolina.
♪♪
-There were times when we were afraid for our safety.
I mean, that's where I got my combat infantryman's badge
when I was deployed over there to the border
of Afghanistan and Pakistan, right there on the edge.
We fought a lot of the Taliban insurgents
who were coming over from Pakistan in Afghanistan
and trying to cause trouble and cause insurgency there.
While I was deployed during a nighttime operation,
there were rockets that were fired with us.
There was a time when our convoy went through a small village
and we had to go door to door, clear out each of the buildings
because the convoy had been fired upon
by insurgents in the village.
I think everybody who signs up for the military
in one fashion or another, I mean, that's --
basically what we do is we kind of write a blank check
to the government and say that you can use us
for anything up to and including our life.
It's kind of the biggest commitment
that you can make to anything --
a cause, a person, a nation, or whatever --
is to sign your name on the dotted line
and say that you're going to go off
and fight a country's wars and defend the nation.
I mean, it does have a little bit of kick
whenever you hold it up.
These can go fully automatic when you rotate it around.
Ultimately, I ended up being denied my commission
because of my HIV status.
It was very infuriating because I had already
demonstrated a significant commitment to the military,
having fought overseas in combat zones,
and shown that I could do the job
and that I was accustomed to a military environment.
And then to get just sort of brushed off
like that just two or three sentences,
not even with an explanation as to why they were saying no.
Just that it was not considered favorably.
It was very frustrating for me.
-What we were litigating in Lieutenant Harrison's case
was an argument that people living with HIV who are in care
and have well-managed HIV are just as healthy
and capable as anyone else with similar health
and training in the military.
And so the fact that the military was treating people
living with HIV in the service differently was problematic
because it was logically and factually inaccurate,
but also it perpetuated a stigma that people living with HIV
may be less capable of any job specifically
because of their HIV status, which they're not.
My name is Kara Ingelhart she/her.
I'm an attorney at Lambda Legal,
the nation's oldest and largest legal organization
dedicated to advancing the rights of LGBTQ people
and people living with HIV. Frankly, the U.S. military
is probably the biggest and strongest
and most well-resourced defendant
I've ever litigated against.
They're incredibly sophisticated from a legal perspective,
but also from every other technological
and medical perspective, as well.
♪♪
-DOD's policy is old policy.
It was originally a relic of, like, the '80s or the '90s
when we were sort of at the height of the AIDS scare.
At that time, there was no effective treatment for HIV;
if you got it, you would get sick and slowly die over time.
And so at that time, there was a lot of hysteria.
There were talks of, well, maybe we should round up
all the people with HIV and put them in camps.
The military decided what at the time
was a fairly compassionate policy
that, okay, we understand you have this condition.
We're not going to kick you out of the military.
We're going to continue to let you sit in your job
and do it for as long as you can.
It was kind of an act of charity or goodwill at the time.
Over the years, though, as we started getting medicines
and treatments, it didn't really change.
And that's sort of the part that was really baffling to me
and really to the rest of the medical community.
♪♪
-The novel theory in Nick Harrison's case
was that people living with HIV should be protected
under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
This is a huge win on behalf of people living with HIV
because never before had people living with HIV
been protected under Constitutional provisions
specifically based on their HIV status.
-I was ecstatic about the news.
It's sort of a situation you sort of read
about in history texts or books or political science textbooks
where the system actually works and change happens.
Everyone here at DCC has been very supportive of me.
I've been surprised that a lot of them have actually heard
my story before, and so they've reached out to me
and expressed congratulations and asked me
if there's anything they can do to sort of support or assist me.
But that's not the case for everybody.
People who are freshly diagnosed with HIV
who've signed up to be an officer in the military
and their lab results come back and it says,
hey, you're HIV positive, they're kicked out.
They're not allowed to proceed on their pathway forward.
-At the Fourth Circuit, we had three different amicus briefs
and a very powerful amicus brief came from retired leaders
across the military branches who said, in their opinion,
that people living with HIV should be able to serve.
And barring them from being able to commission
and have full careers in the military
would negatively impact military readiness.
-You're also not allowed to enlist in the military
if you're HIV positive right now,
and that's something that doesn't make
a lot of sense either.
I think it's important for the military
to drop restrictions on people who have HIV
because part of the military being able to serve the country
is it's got to look like the people that it's serving.
It has to reflect everybody that's out there.
And people living with HIV are part of the population.
They're capable of serving and doing jobs, as well.
They demonstrate that every day
in every other area of government
and every other walk of civilian life.
And so the military should not be excluding them from jobs,
excluding them from the opportunities here,
if they hope to defend equality in society
and the Constitutional rights that we put our names
on the line for and fight for overseas.
If they believe in that, they have to demonstrate it
within the ranks, as well.
♪♪