FINDLAY, Ohio — Katherine Miller got pretty good at hiding her sexuality in high school, brushing off questions about her weekend plans and referring to her girlfriend, Kristin, as “Kris.” She figured she could pull it off at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point too.
After all, “don’t ask, don’t tell” sounded a lot like how she had gotten through her teen years.
But something changed when she arrived at West Point two years ago. She felt the sting of guilt with every lie that violated the academy’s honor code. Then, near the end of her first year, she found herself in a classroom discussion about gays in the military, listening to friends say gays disgusted them.
“I couldn’t work up the courage to foster an argument against what they were saying for fear of being targeted as a gay myself,” Miller said in an interview this week. “I had to be silent. That’s not what I wanted to become.”
What she has become is an unlikely activist for repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military. She resigned from the academy in August and within days was one of the most prominent faces of the debate. Yet her greatest hope now is that she can return to the place she just left.
For that to happen, President Barack Obama must make good on his promise to gay-rights groups that he would push to repeal the 1993 law by the end of the year. The U.S. House already has signed off on the idea, and the Senate is preparing to debate it in the coming weeks.
The Defense Department on Tuesday will release a report that will help shape what Congress decides.
Other gay cadets in Miller’s small circle of friends tried to persuade her to stick it out. Conforming, after all, is a tenet taught in the military.
“It was definitely an option,” said Miller, 21. “I just chose not to live my life that way.”
She still wonders whether she should have stayed and tried to survive under the policy. “At the same time, I don’t think that I would’ve made nearly the impact that coming out publicly made,” she said.
What hurt the most after her resignation were negative comments from people in her hometown. Some were hateful. Some accused her of wasting the military’s time and money. Some called her selfish for taking a spot in the academy from someone else.
“My intentions were honorable. It wasn’t to become a gay-rights activist,” she said. “It was something I was forced to think about once I got there.”
A West Point spokesman said in August that Miller had done very well while at the academy. The harshest criticism from her former classmates came after she wore her dress whites while walking the red carpet with Lady Gaga at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.
