Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I want to take you back to a place in time with me:
December 22, 2010,
Washington DC.
It's about 6:00, 6:30 in the morning, and it's bitterly cold.
It's nearly subzero.
There's a line of over 300 people standing outside an auditorium,
waiting to get in.
They're cold,
they're holding their coffees.
The line winds down the street and around the corner.
All ages: young, old -
Men, women -
All races, ethnicities, religions.
They've flown from across the country to be there at that moment in time.
I arrive, and as I walk down the line,
at least half of the people I recognize
as friends and colleagues that I've met over the last 18 years.
And I get to the back of the line,
and we get to security at the front, and we make our way,
and there's very tough security making sure you're on the list,
showing ID.
And as we get in to the auditorium,
most of the people go and try to get a good seat,
like you did here this morning.
Except for me.
I was ushered to a small area on the right side of the stage,
a small holding area.
When the event started, I was the first one up onstage.
I walked on, and there was a gray duck-tape "X" on the stage,
with my name on it,
telling me there was exactly where I needed to stand.
So I stood there.
The rest of the people came up onstage.
Next thing that happened
was that Vice-President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama came onstage.
They gave a speech about fairness and equality and service to our country.
When President Obama finished his speech,
he left his podium, he came over, he shook my hand.
He walked down to the desk that was on the stage,
took a seat and opened up the folder.
And at that moment, he took a pen
and he signed into law the repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.
And for the first time in the history of the United States,
gays, lesbians and bisexuals were allowed to serve openly
in the United States military.
(Applause)
How did I get there?
How did our country get there?
How did we get to that point in time?
Well, let me take you back to when I was younger,
when I was about your age.
I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
I went to high school, I was an athlete,
I was a nerd, I played in the band -
Had a lot of activities.
But I always knew that there was something a little bit different about myself.
I wasn't quite sure what it was,
but I never really quite felt like I belonged to any one group.
I wasn't one of the jocks, I wasn't one of the brains,
I wasn't one of the popular people.
I didn't drink in high school.
My mother was an alcoholic.
I chose not to drink as a result.
So I wasn't invited to the parties on the weekends.
Kids would come back on Monday talking about all the fun that they had.
I didn't really understand.
Girls would talk about the boys and fashion magazines.
I didn't really understand.
I just knew that I wasn't interested in that,
but I didn't really know why.
I looked up the word "lesbian," thinking that might be what I am,
but it didn't make any sense to me because "lesbian,"
at that time especially,
was considered something that was ugly and crude:
you were man-hating, you were angry,
you were weird, you were psychologically unfit,
and I didn't feel like any of those things.
So I discounted it.
I said, "That's not what I am. I'm just different."
Between my junior and senior year of high school,
I attended I thing called Girls State.
It's an opportunity for kids to go
and know what it's like to run a government,
run a campaign, participate in politics.
And at that, I met a girl who had just finished her plebe year at West Point,
the United States military academy.
And it intrigued me
because she talked about her experience at this university:
you wore a uniform, you were athletic, you were fit, you went to class.
It was very arduous and trying.
And most importantly,
it was a full-ride scholarship.
See, I was the youngest of seven children in my family.
My father was set to retire the same month that I graduated from high school.
He was 65.
My mother, my senior year of high school, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
I knew there was no money left for me for college,
and I needed to get a scholarship if was going to go to college.
So the military and US Naval Academy -
Like it is for many folks,
the military is an opportunity to bring yourself up socioeconomically,
to give you an opportunity, job training, education and all of those things.
So I applied, and I was thankfully accepted.
I was very excited.
The last time I saw my mother alive was when she took me to the airport
and sent me off
to start my new adventure at the Naval Academy.
When I got there, I felt a little bit more like I belonged.
These were kids who wanted to do well, they wanted to perform,
they were smart, they were athletic, they were leaders.
I felt like I finally was part of an institution that felt right.
But still, I felt a little off,
and I began to realize that I was attracted to other girls,
other women,
and that I was different.
And I also discovered immediately
that that knowledge meant that my scholarship was at jeopardy.
At that time, if you were found to be gay or lesbian or bisexual,
you'd be kicked out automatically.
You'd lose your scholarship, you'd been sent home in shame.
So, the moment I learned that I was lesbian,
I also learned that I had something I had to hide very carefully.
So I spent the remaining years at the academy
and in my service to the country,
six years of active duty,
keeping this a secret, and it was not easy.
I was a victim of sexual harassment,
I was a victim of gay bashing,
I was a victim of many different things in the military,
but I continued to serve because I wanted to serve my country, I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed being on a ship,
I enjoyed being a supply officer in the Navy,
and I wanted to continue.
But after I'd fulfilled my obligation,
I realized that it was just too much of a price to pay.
It was too hard, day in and day out wondering
if that was the day they were going to find out,
and you'll lose your scholarship or you'll lose your job.
So, after my six years of active duty, I transitioned into the reserves,
and I got accepted to Stanford Business School.
And while as a student at Stanford, President Clinton was elected president,
and one of his campaign pledges
was that he was going to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the military.
I thought it was fantastic.
I was very excited.
I was continuing to serve in the reserves.
I did one week in a month, two weeks a year,
and I was out at school, at Stanford.
I was the co-president of the gay and lesbian student group.
But I kept my worlds very separate so that the military would never find out.
When Clinton started to backpedal on his commitment to lift the ban,
there was a rally that was organized in Moffett Naval Air Station
in Mountain View.
And a classmate of mine who was a former air force officer
told me about it and gave me the number of the organizer.
I called the organizer and I said,
"Tell me a little more what this rally is all about.
What is it about?"
He said, "We're going to protest the ban on gays serving in the military,
and we are going to encourage President Clinton to lift that ban."
He said, "What about you?" I said, "I'm a Navy reservist."
He said, "Would you like to speak at that?"
I said, "Oh, no, no. Not at all.
That's too dangerous. There might be media there.
I don't want to do that."
And I hung up the phone, and I thought about it,
and that question kept going around and around in my head.
I couldn't sleep
because I kept thinking to myself,
"Why not? Why won't I speak at that? What's the fear? What am I worried about?"
And I realized that in all of the media,
all of the conversations that we'd been having
about the policy on gays in the military,
everyone was talking about it:
gay rights advocates, attorneys, congressmen -
The only voice that wasn't in the conversation
was those who were actually impacted.
Gays and lesbians in the military, by definition,
were forced to not be part of the conversation.
So I went back to thinking about my mother
and some of the lessons that she taught me in the short time I had with her.
One of them was, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
And I thought to myself, "Why not?"
So I called the organizer up,
I asked him if that opportunity to speak was still valid,
and he said yes.
So, in January 1993,
at a rally outside of Moffett Naval Air Station,
I publicly came out as Moffett Naval Officer and a lesbian,
and thus my life changed forever.
I went through two military discharge hearings;
the first under the policy prior to Don't Ask Don't Tell.
They found me "guilty" of being lesbian
and had started the paperwork to process me out.
Then President Clinton announced the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy,
and I had a second discharge hearing.
For whatever reason, at the second hearing -
Before I get to that -
Between the two discharge hearings, I continued to serve.
I was selected for promotion to lieutenant commander.
So on the one hand, they were trying to kick me out.
On the other hand, they were promoting me.
So between those two discharge hearings, I was living my life as regular.
I had graduated from Stanford Business School,
I was a consultant,
and I was working with a colleague, and his name was Ross,
and he came from the Portland office.
And when you consult, you're on different projects,
with different clients,
and you're constantly meeting people and getting to know them.
And so, Ross came down from Portland, our very first client meeting,
and the receptionist recognized me
from the media surrounding my first discharge hearing.
And he said,
"Oh, Miss Dunning, thank you so much for everything that you've done.
We're so happy and proud of you."
And my fellow consultant didn't know what the heck he was talking about.
So in the elevator ride after the meeting,
I had to come out to my work colleague and tell him what had happened.
He then revealed to me that he was Mormon
and that he'd never met anyone gay or lesbian before in his life.
So began the education of Ross.
And over the next two months, we worked late nights, we worked weekends,
we traveled together across the country,
and it gave us many opportunities to share our personal lives with one another,
and talk about what it was like to be lesbian
and what it was like to be a Mormon.
It was a safe space to ask questions.
He asked me things like, you know, "Who's the boy in your relationships?"
I had to explain to him there was no boy.
I asked him what he would do if his daughter came out to him as lesbian.
He assured me that that could not possibly happen.
(Chuckles)
And so the conversation went back and forth,
and we grew to be very close colleagues.
I respected him for some of the tenets of his faith,
the fact that he never worked on Sundays because he focused on the family,
and other aspects of it.
When it came time for my second discharge hearing,
I had been working with my attorneys, preparing our arguments,
and when I came home one day,
there was a bouquet of flowers on my front doorstep.
And the arrangement was very unique. I'd never seen anything like it before.
It was a dozen red roses,
but there was a single yellow rose in there.
And I had never seen that, and I wasn't sure who had even sent them.
So I brought the flowers inside,
and I opened up the card to see who had sent them,
and the card read,
"Some may fail to see the beauty of the yellow rose
and remove it from the bunch.
Good luck tomorrow - Ross."
And I tell that story
because it moved me so much that he cared enough about me
and cared enough about my discharge hearing
and supported me
that he would do this act, this beautiful act of connection.
And what I want to tell you today about overcoming obstacles
and the obstacles that I've come over
is it's about asking and telling.
It's about creating connection.
It's about making a difference with everyone that you interact with.
And you can make a difference at a public policy level,
like Don't Ask Don't Tell,
and take on an institution like the Pentagon,
or you can make a difference in an individual interaction,
one-on-one with someone.
In closing,
I just want to tell you that standing next to the president
while he signed the most important civil rights legislation of my generation
was one of the greatest honors I've ever had.
But in true fashion, I still have to be myself.
I may have just come out as lesbian.
That's not all of me. I'm also a jokester.
So, we were standing next to the table
and he has to sign his name with 13 pens
because they'd give them away as souvenirs afterward.
So, it takes a really long time for him to sign his name.
So, he takes one pen and he does the back of the B,
and he puts the pen down and he takes a second pen,
and he finishes the B and he puts that pen down
and he gets another one and he starts the A ....
It takes a while.
At that point, I'd been working 18 years on this issue.
I'd been lobbying in Capitol Hill,
I'd been working with an organization providing free legal services
to those impacted by the policy.
I had done public speaking, I had done fundraising,
I'd done everything I could to change this policy and change this law.
And I was thinking to myself, "Here I am, the moment I've been dreaming of.
What could go wrong now?"
And so, in my outside voice, I simply blurted out:
"Make sure you spell it right."
(Laughter)
To the president of the United States.
(Laughter)
Fortunately, he has a sense of humor and he laughed.
I was not dragged off by secret service.
(Laughter)
The ceremony was allowed to continue.
So -
be your authentic self.
The people around you,
you think you might not have as much in common with as you actually do.
Everyone carries secrets, everyone carries pain,
everyone carries things that they want to share.
Reach out to one another, ask each other how you're doing,
tell them how you're doing,
tell them about your unique experience
because everyone of you, your experiences and your ideas and your thoughts
are your own unique, personal strand of DNA,
nonbiological.
And we all win when we learn who each other is.
Thank you for having me here today.
(Applause)