…or my email will make military officials think you don’t hate queers. But under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy, there isn’t much of a difference.

I received this email today in response to my opt-in e-newsletter that I sent out yesterday to my subscribers:

Please stop sending me emails. My brother put me on your list as a prank. I am in the military and such false accusations of being associated with a gay column could get me in a lot of trouble. I do appreciate the free information when it comes to plane tickets and cool recipies, but I think that as a whole these letters are not appropriate. Maybe if you had stuff for people that are not gay. Thank you for your time. Please remove me from all of your lists.

(Although unrelated to this post, I cannot, for the life of me, understand her reference to plane tickets and recipes in relation to me. It seems like she is new to this whole email thing and thinks that non-personal emails come from one source that will customize your requests — kind of like a Santa Spam. Posting her unedited email here without comment on this curious detail could mislead newcomers to my blog and site. To be clear: I don’t waste my time or yours sending out spam.)

Based on her email address, I can verify that this individual is indeed employed in the military. I cannot verify that her brother was impersonating her when I received a sign-up request from her email address. Perhaps she signed up and now she needs a paper trail that she is “not gay.” I was tempted to write back asking for clarification about what she means by “appropriate,” explaining that any spam she gets — appreciated or not — is not from me, asking why she hadn’t notified me several months ago immediately after she received the confirmation email for her subscription, explaining how I have plenty of readers who support equality for families but are not necessarily gay themselves. But since I didn’t want to draw any more attention to this if she is being monitored, I simply apologized and deleted her from the database.

This is just one of the many ridiculous effects of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy. Sympathy, empathy, interest, curiosity, support of queer folks — anything other than blatant gay-bashing makes you suspect and vulnerable to investigation.

Servicemembers: PLEASE don’t send me email using your .MIL address. It’s too risky. Open up a personal anonymous/free email account, but do not use a work computer to send gay-related email. To demonstrate that I’m not overly paranoid, SLDN explains computer precautions servicemembers should take: “Statements of sexual orientation and information about gay activities obtained by military officials from computer drives, disks, e-mail or on-line services have been used to investigate and discharge service members.”

For anyone who thinks the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is simply a reasonable “compromise” so that GLBT can serve, look at all the daily precautions queers in the military have to keep straight in order to look straight: SLDN Survival Guide.

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