|
|
 |
 |
Living in Limbo with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"August, 2002 A long court battle leaves Zoe Dunning, MBA '93, the lone openly gay member of the United States military. She's fighting to change that. BY JANET ZICH
ON SATURDAY, JAN. 16, 1993, Zoe Dunning, a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve, was a second-year student at the Graduate School of Business, and William Jefferson Clinton was about to become President of the United States. During his campaign Clinton had promised to lift the ban on gays in the military. Dunning, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate with six years' active service, decided to nudge him along. Appearing at a rally at California's Moffett Field, Dunning publicly declared herself a lesbian. The following week she was informed that discharge proceedings would be brought against her. "I don't think anyone knew gays in the military would become a major issue of Clinton's first year," Dunning says. "And I didn't really know what I'd signed myself up for. I never thought it would be the two-and-a-half-year legal battle that it turned out to be." Dunning won the battle, but in a larger sense she lost the war. The Navy has promoted her twice since she came out÷once, ironically, while she was still fighting to remain in the reserve÷and she now holds the rank of commander. She also holds the distinction of being the only openly gay member of the U.S. military. Which, of course, is part of the loss. "The reason I did it was to change the military's policy, not just to win my own case," Dunning says. Dunning's successful defense÷that identifying oneself as homosexual represents status rather than conduct÷cannot be used in any other cases. "What they did after I won was to send out a memo saying the defense I used was no longer valid. Typical military!" She laughs. "If they lose, then they change the rules." As for the military's antigay policy, it is more entrenched than ever. When Clinton took office, a presidential order could have overturned it. But the furor surrounding the issue became so great that Congress augmented the policy with legislation. Now only the courts or the Congress can change "Don't ask, don't tell." "Unfortunately," she notes wryly, "no one is ever held accountable for asking." While Dunning's case was still before the Navy, the newly graduated MBA joined consulting firms Deloitte & Touche and A.T. Kearney before following the e-commerce rush to Webvan. "Webvan wasn't quite the Internet glitz that everyone made it out to be," the former supply officer says. "Basically, I found myself chasing down Cheerios in a 300,000-square-foot warehouse. Webvan was a great experience because it was a new business. But after a while I felt stagnant doing the same job with the same responsibilities." Dunning now consults independently on a variety of situations but has an understandable interest in diversity training. In April, for example, she worked at a three-day conference put on by IBM for their gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender managers and executives to build leadership skills. The previous weekend she had been a keynote speaker at the annual Reaching Out Gay MBA conference in Chicago. "They wanted to know: 'Do I go out and prove myself and make myself indispensable and then come out? Or do I come out immediately and find out what happens?'" There is no one answer, she says. "But to the extent they can be out I think it's great, because it facilitates workplace equality." Fairness and equality in the workplace are major concerns for Dunning, and she draws on her experience with the military when she addresses the subject. "The military is the nation's largest employer and it discriminates," she says. "Not only does it discriminate, it is forced by law to discriminate. Last year 1,250 service members were kicked out. Given 9/11, you'd think they would want many of our most talented people. But even as they're calling up reservists, they're kicking out gays and lesbians." Dunning is now entering her 11th year in the Naval Reserve. Currently, she is working with a unit that acts as an internal management consultant for the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. It's a unit that calls for business consulting, finance, and high-tech experience. "We bring business best practices to the military for the Navy and the Pacific Fleet," she explains. "When 9/11 happened, like everyone else I felt a desire to contribute," Dunning says. "I spent a week down in San Diego helping to mobilize troops for Naval Coastal Warfare Group One, which does harbor defense and security. Then I spent five weeks with the commander of the Third Fleet and his staff on board the USS Coronado in San Diego. We had a couple of ships off the coast of California that were providing surveillance and first line of defense against anything incoming toward the United States. I also spent five weeks preparing the John C. Stennis Battle Group for accelerated deployment to the Middle East. They were not scheduled to deploy until January or February. They left in November, the day after we were done." Relaxing after work in her brown-shingled San Francisco cottage, built as a haven for survivors of the 1906 earthquake, only Dunning's wrinkle-free blouse and spit-polished shoes give away her years in the military. Looking back on the choices she's made, she says simply: "I have no regrets." From all reports, Dunning is respected by her fellow officers. She doesn't hide the fact she is a lesbian, nor does she push it. "The role I've settled into," she says, "is this: to be the only openly gay member of the military and by my actions try to disprove the foundations of the argument against gays in the military, that they are disruptive to unit cohesion and morale. "Part of my original attraction to the military was that it gave me a sense of greater purpose. My greater purpose now is to change its culture, person by person, with every single interaction I have. You know, we MBAs have a tendency to make grand gestures and create visions and do things on a macro scale. We can change policies, but I think in the end what truly creates cultural change is one-on-one interaction."
|
|
|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
Living in Limbo with “Don’t Ask, Don‘t
Tell” 
