Debrief on NPR/Fresh Air Interview

This afternoon I recorded an hour long interview with NPR’s Terry Gross for tomorrow’s ‘Fresh Air’ episode on DADT and the national premier of ‘Ask Not.’ Over the past four years I’ve done hundreds of pieces of media on DADT, through which I thought I had exhaustively explored every nook and cranny of my experience serving in the Army and being discharged under DADT. Yet Gross, who I had heard is one of the nation’s premier interviewers, decided to focus almost entirely on my own personal experience and actually made me realize, through the course of her insightful probing, that I still had unexplored sentiments related to my experience.

It took me nearly four years after being discharged under DADT to come forward, share my experience, and get active in the movement to repeal the DADT law. When I first began doing public work on DADT,  I remained quite shy and unwilling, even then, to open up, but I would at least speak in summaries and generalities. As I spoke out more, did more interviews, and faced more questions, I became more and more comfortable talking about my experiences serving under the cloud of DADT. After hundreds of these, I was sure that there was nothing left to “self-discover.” But tomorrow’s ‘Fresh Air,’ which will also feature ‘Unfriendly Fire’ author Nathaniel Frank, should contain some original, un-recycled material about my experience under DADT, thanks to the host’s superb skill.