BGLTSA Names Person of the Year

The Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) awarded its first-ever BGLTS Person of the Year Award yesterday evening to Colonel Margrethe Cammermeyer (Ret.), a 31-year veteran of the National Guard.

Cammermeyer—who won the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service in Vietnam—was discharged from the National Guard in 1992 after acknowledging in 1989 that she was a lesbian, but was reinstated in 1994 after successfully challenging her discharge in Federal Court.

“There are some things that you ultimately believe in your blood,” Cammermeyer said last night. “What we’re all striving for is equal rights.”

After a reception in Boylston Hall, Cammermeyer received her award and delivered a speech to students and community members in Emerson Hall.

During her speech, Cammermeyer discussed her divorce from her husband and her realization in the 1980’s that she was a lesbian.

During a security clearance interview in 1989, she was asked about her sexuality.

“It had to do with honesty,” she told the audience last night, “and so I said, ‘I am a lesbian.’”

Cammermeyer described the ordeals she went through after her homosexuality became public and she became a visible figure in the fight for gay rights in the military.

She told of verbal attacks, threatening letters, and a bomb that was once placed in her mailbox.

“I had not felt and heard such hatred before,” Cammermeyer said. “It comes out of nowhere, because it is so irrational.”

She went on to discuss her involvement in the fight for gay rights, which included a run for Congress in 1998.

Cammermeyer became emotional when she told the audience about her 2004 marriage to her partner, Diane, which was nullified by an Oregon court last week.

“It’s enormously painful to be invalidated again,” she said.

She spent a significant portion of last night addressing the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which she called “obscene.”

“It’s the legalizing of discrimination,” she said. “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is based on the denial of speech.”

“What you have is an outrageous law that needs to be overturned,” she added.

Cammermeyer was brought to Harvard in part by the efforts of Rachel K. Popkin ’08, a member of the BGLTSA and co-chair of the BGLTS Person of the Year Award Committee. Popkin’s high school Gay-Straight Alliance faculty adviser knew Cammermeyer, and put them in touch.

Popkin said she thought the event was very successful, and said, “we hope to get bigger and better” in subsequent years.

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.