Out of Service

Laura C. Moore, MIT class of 1991, was a ROTC midshipman as an undergraduate and served on active duty. Moore says she never came out about her bisexuality while she was serving but saw many cases of discrimination against other recruits.

"The ROTC unit at MIT had students from Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, and Tufts - a pretty enlightened and educated bunch of people," she says. "Yet when the topic came to gays in the military, the level of anger and closed-mindedness I saw was shocking."

Moore says that while she was in ROTC, there was a push by some Harvard midshipmen to bring the program back to campus. She remembers talking about the discrimination issue with one of the students behind the campaign: "He said that the military shouldn't have to accept people who had something wrong with them, whether they were gay or had a leg missing, or whatever--his words."

"There weren't any openly gay people in ROTC to discriminate against, but the atmosphere was certainly homophobic," she adds, saying that among midshipmen, the word "fag" was considered to be the ultimate insult.

She tells the story of an MIT student who was in her company in ROTC for a semester. When the student came out to his unit commander at the beginning of his senior year, the Navy demanded he pay back the first three years of his full scholarship.

The Navy relented after the student took his case to the press. But Moore says the military is missing out.