thedrifter
12-19-08, 08:57 AM
The gay life of a U.S. Marine
By: Meryn Fluker - The Daily Iowan
Posted: 12/16/08
What does it say about an institution that it requires some of its members to lie about or not disclose prominent aspects of their personal lives? UI student Brett Edward Stout calls it "discrimination." The United States military calls it Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
"It facilitates, to use the awful word, the idea that something could be un-American," said Stout, who is also gay and a former Marine. "And that something is being gay, as being un-American. Or it's unpatriotic, or it's amoral."
His début novel, Sugar-Baby Bridge, follows Brad, a Marine who has just finished his tour of duty and is exploring his life and sexuality on a journey with an older man named Ron.
One only needs to search Wikipedia to learn about the history of gays in the military, but anecdotal evidence in the age of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be really difficult to find. Unless you're Stout, who also had gay friends while he served in the military.
"I stood outside my first-sergeant's office, trimming the hedges underneath his window, and heard him call me 'that faggot,' " he said. "As somebody like myself, I do not sit down and let people treat me like that, but unfortunately I was forced to sit there and allow [him] to continue to say that."
The Cedar Rapids native wrote his first poem in fourth grade; he said he was called down to the principal's office and accused of plagiarism. In sixth grade, he attempted to write a long-form novel and stopped after 68 pages because he felt it was going nowhere. By the time he received his diploma, he noted he had written more than 4,000 poems.
During his junior year in high school, Stout joined the military's Delayed Entry Program. He studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute and served as a linguist in the Marines. In 2004, after eight years in the military, he ended his service.
"I'm extraordinarily proud of having been a Marine," he said. "I would probably be flipping burgers somewhere and hating my life in Cedar Rapids or some completely anonymous town in rural Iowa, or dead, if it weren't for joining the Marines."
Sugar-Baby Bridge is the first in a planned series of five books from Stout, though he said he isn't promising that he'll write all of them, but he pledged to write three. The next planned novel will deal more explicitly with what it means to be gay and in the military and the circumstances that ensue with that situation. For now, Stout is enjoying readers' reaction to his work.
"Everybody who's read it has taken such a different idea of what [Brad's and Ron's] relationship was," he said. "I think that's beautiful."
Ellie
By: Meryn Fluker - The Daily Iowan
Posted: 12/16/08
What does it say about an institution that it requires some of its members to lie about or not disclose prominent aspects of their personal lives? UI student Brett Edward Stout calls it "discrimination." The United States military calls it Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
"It facilitates, to use the awful word, the idea that something could be un-American," said Stout, who is also gay and a former Marine. "And that something is being gay, as being un-American. Or it's unpatriotic, or it's amoral."
His début novel, Sugar-Baby Bridge, follows Brad, a Marine who has just finished his tour of duty and is exploring his life and sexuality on a journey with an older man named Ron.
One only needs to search Wikipedia to learn about the history of gays in the military, but anecdotal evidence in the age of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be really difficult to find. Unless you're Stout, who also had gay friends while he served in the military.
"I stood outside my first-sergeant's office, trimming the hedges underneath his window, and heard him call me 'that faggot,' " he said. "As somebody like myself, I do not sit down and let people treat me like that, but unfortunately I was forced to sit there and allow [him] to continue to say that."
The Cedar Rapids native wrote his first poem in fourth grade; he said he was called down to the principal's office and accused of plagiarism. In sixth grade, he attempted to write a long-form novel and stopped after 68 pages because he felt it was going nowhere. By the time he received his diploma, he noted he had written more than 4,000 poems.
During his junior year in high school, Stout joined the military's Delayed Entry Program. He studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute and served as a linguist in the Marines. In 2004, after eight years in the military, he ended his service.
"I'm extraordinarily proud of having been a Marine," he said. "I would probably be flipping burgers somewhere and hating my life in Cedar Rapids or some completely anonymous town in rural Iowa, or dead, if it weren't for joining the Marines."
Sugar-Baby Bridge is the first in a planned series of five books from Stout, though he said he isn't promising that he'll write all of them, but he pledged to write three. The next planned novel will deal more explicitly with what it means to be gay and in the military and the circumstances that ensue with that situation. For now, Stout is enjoying readers' reaction to his work.
"Everybody who's read it has taken such a different idea of what [Brad's and Ron's] relationship was," he said. "I think that's beautiful."
Ellie