From: GayScribe@aol.com
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 23:45:14 -0400
Subject: Cammermeyer article now available


WELCOME!

Attached is an article for your periodical to consider for publication.

(If you are not a publication or wish to be removed from this list, please
see below.)

Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, the highest ranking officer to be removed from
the military because of her sexual orientation, made a rare appearance at a
gay and lesbian gathering in Dallas last Saturday. She offered advice and
wisdom that could only come from her experience and background. Cammermeyer's
presentation was wonderful, and this story captures the speech well.

If your publication normally pays for articles and reviews, please contact
the author, Gip Plaster, prior to publication at GPlaster@aol.com. If your
publication does not pay, you may be able to publish the piece at no cost.
Please contact the author prior to publication.

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ARTICLE BELOW:
by Gip Plaster
(c) Copyright 1996 Gip Plaster

DALLAS -- Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, the highest ranking military officer
to be discharge because of sexual orientation, used her experience to show
gay and lesbian leaders how they can have a role in shaping society and
caring for their community.
     "I was plucked out of the military and dropped into a role that I was
totally unfamiliar with," Cammermeyer told a small group of reporters meeting
before her keynote address at the 1996 Conference of Leadership Lambda, a
Dallas group with plans to expand to other cities that trains its members to
be leaders in the gay and lesbian community .
     Cammermeyer said her experience has helped her identify two kinds of
leaders within the gay and lesbian community. 
     "You have the ability to foster community -- be a role model -- or to
reach out to the rest of the world which is where the social change will take
place," Cammermeyer said. "Those roles work together to create family, to
create community, to create social change."
     Cammermeyer's address in Dallas was one of the first times she has
addressed a gay and lesbian audience.
     "It feels inappropriate," she said. "What is it that I might bring to a
situation where the audience already knows the struggle?"
     She prefers to fulfill the second role, as one who works outside the
community on its behalf.
     "Where I can do the most is continuing my talks at the Rotary Clubs and
hoping for an invitation to the 700 Club," the colonel said.
     Cammermeyer said this kind of work outside the gay and lesbian community
helps bring the truth about the community to mainstream America, without
whose help, she said, gay and lesbian causes may not succeed. She used the
struggle for women's rights as an example, noting that women might never have
won the struggle for the right to vote if men had not come to support the
cause.
     "We would be making a grave mistake... if we try to do this alone," she
said. "A minority will never succeed until they latch onto the majority who
in some ways 'give permission' for the changes to take place."
     Col. Cammermeyer, a registered nurse who holds a doctorate, is the
highest ranking officer discharged from the military for sexual orientation.
As part of a top secret clearance investigation, Cammermeyer answered an
interrogator's question about her sexual orientation, "I am a lesbian." On
June 11, 1992, after 26 years of military service, Cammermeyer was
discharged. On June 1, 1994, she was reinstated, but she has case pending
against the government and cannot retire until it is settled.
     Cammermeyer said before her discharge from the military she did not work
to stop discrimination since it did not affect her. She said she was a
mainstream, middle-America citizen protected by federal government
employment.
     Now, since writing her autobiography, Serving in Silence, in 1995 and
allowing Glenn Close to portray her a TV movie, Cammermeyer said she feels
she has an obligation to fulfill the role in which the publicity has placed
her. She said she will continue to speak out as long as people think she has
something to say. She encouraged the leaders and future leaders at the
conference to reach out to gay and straight people outside the active gay
community.
     "You need to reach people like me --  like I was," she said.
     And she said leaders need to have answers to the common questions with
which they will be confronted, like "How do you know you are a lesbian?"
Cammermeyer said she asks people who ask that question how they know they are
straight, then proposes this answer.
     "You know because everything around you seems to fit," she said,
referring to society's perceptions about gender roles and expectations
regarding marriage and family. "But when it doesn't fit, it's the beginning
of questioning why it doesn't fit."
     Cammermeyer said when she was required to visit an African-American
church as part of her military service, she discovered many perceived
differences are not as important as she had thought.
     "All the things I didn't know and didn't understand I didn't need to
know. I just needed to let it be," she said.
     She encouraged the group, though, to work for change when they encounter
things they think are wrong in society.
     "My entire life was spent following the rules, but every once in a while
there was a rule that pushed my buttons," Cammermeyer said, and she said she
usually won when she challenged those rules.
     "We can hope that as the train goes by we can be ahead of it or at least
along side it as it travels for social change," Cammermeyer said.
(c) Copyright 1996 Gip Plaster
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