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At first, the offer for Michelle Benecke to attend law school for free seemed like a dream come true, but her integrity wouldn’t permit it. When the military offered to pay all expenses for Captain Michelle Benecke—a rising female star in the U.S. Army’s officer ranks—to attend law school inevitably leading to a bright future as a JAG officer—she courageously declined. For Michelle Benecke knew that as a future JAG officer, she would be required to prosecute gay soldiers for their sexuality. And as a lesbian herself, Benecke could not tolerate the thought of participating in the prosecutorial practice of targeting gay soldiers.
Instead, Captain Benecke, a decorated soldier with a distinguished record marked with many firsts for a female officer, said goodbye to a blossoming career in the military, and pivoted to become an ardent advocate for the LGBTQ community. And it is through her work as an LGBTQ advocate, including those in uniform, that Benecke made her mark in the history books. Her pioneering LGBTQ advocacy work extended far beyond the reaches of her legal organization and reached the halls of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ultimately the White House. Because of Benecke, the military’s antiquated, draconian, ill-informed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that targeted gay and bisexual military members was abolished. Because of Benecke, soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines, and members of the coast guard could finally step forward to serve without fear of reprisal for their sexual orientation.
Harvard and LGBTQ Advocacy
Although Michelle Benecke didn’t accept the Army’s offer of free law school in 1989, she still fulfilled her dream of becoming an attorney by earning admission and paying her own passage through Harvard’s prestigious Law School.
With law degree in hand and equipped with a unique military background as a female, lesbian soldier Michelle Benecke set forth to change the world. As the co-founder of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, she rapidly became known for her expertise championing women’s rights, gay rights, and, in general, all civil rights. The work of Benecke and her colleague Dixon Osburn eventually led to the abolishment of the military’s gay bans, such as the policy that catalyzed her departure from the military, causing her advocacy work to take flight.
Arguably, no person was more suited than Benecke to lead a campaign for the abolishment of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Not only did her experience provide an understanding of the military, but she lived her military career with the ever-present nagging worry of being investigated and punished if the truth of her sexuality were made manifest. These difficult career dynamics, coupled with Benecke’s natural propensity to advocacy, volunteerism, and charitable causes, quickly launched her to the forefront of what would eventually become one of the most notable military changes of the last century—the overturn of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
A Military Legacy
To be clear, Benecke and Osburn’s campaign to overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a campaign targeting a terrible law out of respect for military service, not against it. As for Benecke, the military had filled an important role in her family’s legacy for generations. Her father, a Vietnam veteran, retired from the Army as a senior non-commissioned officer—a Master Sergeant. The family’s familiarity with military service helped inform Benecke’s decision to step forward and follow in her father’s military service footsteps. As a university freshman, Benecke donned the uniform and joined the ROTC program while pursuing studies at the University of Virginia.
Upon graduation from UVA and accepting her commission as an Army Officer, Benecke quickly rose to the rank of Captain where she served in the Air Defense Artillery branch, leading combat arms soldiers in units with a contingency to Southwest Asia and the Middle East.
As a female officer in the combat arms world, and with combat parachutist and air assault qualifications, Benecke was reaching benchmarks never before available to female soldiers. And though she was among the first women to integrate into a traditionally all-male combat arms field, Captain Benecke’s success and that of other women wasn’t always celebrated by peers. They were the target of unfair scrutiny from a hostile and misogynistic work environment that often included sexual harassment. Women who were intrepid enough to push back against harassment and assault often were accused of being lesbians in retaliation, and were investigated regardless of their actual sexual orientation.
However, Benecke experienced great satisfaction as a pioneer and didn’t leave her profession and community because of the difficult work environment. She left because an impossible moral dilemma to solve—the dilemma that as a lesbian JAG officer, she would be expected to prosecute other soldiers based solely on their sexual orientation. So, exercising one of the seven Army core values that Benecke learned in ROTC, she demonstrated immense “Personal Courage” by stepping away from the uniform and stepping into the world of civil rights advocacy.
The Overturn of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Benecke’s transition into civilian life occurred during the sunsetting years of the Reagan Administration and into the early years of the Clinton Administration. Elected with the overwhelming support of the LGBTQ community, Bill Clinton’s arrival to the White House was a hopeful sign that perhaps the political stars were finally beginning to align in a way that anti-LGBTQ policies in the military would go the way of the Dodo. Unfortunately, that star alignment didn’t deliver during the 8 years of the Clinton presidency, and arguably got even muddier with the roll-out of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 1993.
Far from a solution to the military’s longstanding history of anti-gay policies, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell remained in force through the entire decade of the 1990s, the 2000s, and right into the first part of the 2nd decade of the new millennium.
Then finally, on December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to support the abolishment of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and on September 20, 2011, after eighteen years during which thousands lost their careers, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell officially ended.
By the time Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was abolished, Michelle Benecke and her Servicemembers Legal Defense Network had been tirelessly raising the clarion call for nearly two decades. And though at times it may have seemed like their work was never going to alter the myopic minds of top brass and elected officials in D.C., ultimately they prevailed.
Yes, Michelle Benecke is an unsung military hero. Not because of what she did in the military, but because of what she did for the military. Michelle Benecke’s vital work abolishing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell made it so thousands of servicemembers and of course many thousands of future recruits, could proceed forward with their miliary careers without fear of reprisal, persecution, or punishment for simply being who they are.
Its estimated that nearly 115,000 servicemembers were discharged between World War II and the abolishment of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell merely because they identified as (or were perceived to be) part of the LGB community (policies banning, and then subsequently permitting, service by transgender people were to come later). To put that into perspective, that figure is approximately 10% of the strength of today’s total armed forces.
Although the U.S. Government’s abolishment of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell took far too long, the legal victory had finally been won, fulfilling a promise President Obama noted when he said at the signing of the bill into law, “For we are not a nation that says, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ We are a nation that says, ‘Out of many, we are one.’ We are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot. We are a nation that believes that all men and women are created equal. Those are the ideals that generations have fought for. Those are the ideals that we uphold today.”
And then, with the stroke of a pen, and after decades of Michelle Benecke’s tireless work, President Obama signed the bill into law.
