Coming Out Under Fire
Coming Out Under Fire
In this essay, Berube shifts his focus toward military policy and the Selective Service System, which he describes as “a stigmatizing machine.” He recounts the ways that lesbian and gay military personnel were “fighting two wars,” one against the external enemy and the other against a set of policies that led to courts-martial, witch hunts, imprisonment, and dishonorable discharges. As with his historical accounts of police repression and arrests in San Francisco, Berube is at pains to argue that repression also breeds resistance. “The current spirit of resistance,” he writes, “was born under fire.” The essay can be seen as an attempt to create cross-generational links between those who fought back against the military policies of the war years and those who gave birth to gay liberation in the 1970s.
Keywords: Berube, military policy, Selective Service System, stigmatizing machine, gay military personnel
North Carolina Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
