On Oct. 4, a long stretch of the South 5th Avenue entrance to the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration ( VA Hospital was lined on both sides with Pride flags that welcomed LGBTQ veterans, their families, allies and health care providers to the 3rd Annual Operation Do Ask, Do Tell. The symposium, which focused on health needs and resources, was organized by the hospital's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Allies Special Emphasis Programs in partnership with the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center, American Veterans for Equal Rights ( AVER ) and the Federal Health Care Center.
The relaxed atmosphere of the event was filled with a sense of camaraderie and open dialogue, and began as attendees who filled the Hines VA auditorium building rose to honor a color guard composed of AVER members Lee Reinhart, Jim Darby, Jean Albright and Bill Daman who solemnly entered and posted the United States, City of Chicago, P.O.W. and Pride flags while LGBTQ veterans representing each branch of the military and courageous self-sacrifice in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan saluted and placed their hands over their hearts for the national anthem. Some faces could not help but betray a tear.
"Each face tells a story and comes from many different backgrounds with many different life experiences," Hines VA Assistant Director Karandeep Sraon said in his welcome. "We do not discriminate based on those differences."
However the United States military still does despite the 2011 repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell and a VA directive, issued in the same year, providing respectful delivery of healthcare to transgender and intersex veterans. According to a May 2014 study by the Williams Institute there are 149,800 current and former transgender service members who still remain excluded from openly serving their country.
One of those service members currently engaged in a tireless campaign to change that policy is former United States Navy SEAL and prolific civil-rights activist Kristin Beck. The recipient of multiple decorations that include the Bronze Star and Purple Heart as well as commendations for marksmanship, conduct, achievement, exceptionally meritorious service and valor in deployments spanning four wars, Beck has channeled two decades of heroism into a post-retirement mission for equality during which she has crisscrossed the country candidly sharing her story, inspiring through example and putting an unassuming face to the transgender experience both on and off the battlefield.
While others with her international notoriety and daunting scheduleincluding an upcoming meeting with President Barack Obamacould have easily been forgiven for moving on after delivering the keynote speech at the symposium, Beck was determined to spend the entire day there answering questions, posing for pictures and in solidarity with her fellow veterans. "I'm here so when somebody says the word 'transgender' it's not just a word in a book; it's people. I want people to understand who we are and what this really means," she said.
Beck began her speech by noting that some visitors to the VA that day had complained about the rainbow colors flown on South 5th Avenue saying that they, as veterans, only served the red, white and blue of the stars and stripes. "I served [that] flag also," Beck said. "The thing is I was defending it for everyone not just that one little group that was represented signing the Declaration of Independence. When you join the military, you are defending freedom no matter what color, no matter what religion. Those flags out there remind you of who you fought for; what freedom means for all of us."
Beck admitted she loves asking and answering questions. "You have to ask yourself [every day] 'what can I do to make this country better?' I have to be healthy, I have to be happy to make my family better, to make the community better and, in the end, if we can all start doing that it will make the world a better place."
She shared pictures of herself on the farm where she grew up as one of five siblings in a loving family that barely got by and never took even the powdered milk they drank for granted. "I never talked about the stuff that was inside, I had to hide it," she recalled. "When my dad caught me wearing one of my sister's outfits, I learned real quick that this was not something I could show on the outside."
Despite having to hide who she was, Beck said that she is luckier than so many LGBTQ young people and so spends a great deal of time talking to and holding fundraisers for youth groups across the country. "A lot of these kids growing up end up losing their family and their friends; they lose everything. When you're stuck on the street, you have nothing and you have to survive," she said. "The amount of homelessness of LGBTQ youth is just not right and I'm going to try to help out these kids as much as I can."
In recalling her career as a senior chief of Navy SEAL teams ( including the famed SEAL Team Six ), Beck said that she accomplished more through communication and a hand shake than with her M4 machine gun. "I saved more lives talking to somebody and seeing who they are and working out where we can find our similarities," she said. "So I built a lot of bridges out in the middle of nowhere just talking to people."
The pictures she showed of that life carried the headline "The girl you gave dirty looks at is the same person you thanked last week."
"We all change over the years," Beck said. "Transgender women get judged immediately and a lot of those judgments really hurt. We're all spiritual beings with a soul and a pivotal spark inside. We can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars working on a body that turns into worm food and we spend almost nothing working on something that lasts as sentient beings [and] thinking people."
Despite surviving the carnage and moment-by-moment peril on the battlefield, Beck looked back upon her transition as a tough journey between societal perceptions of 'Conan' and 'Barbie'. "We've worked so hard to try and separate ourselves in magazines, with make-up and by the language and gestures we use," she said. "We're always trying to box each other up and isolate each other with labels. I just want to be human and have people look at me [that way]."
It was a sentiment she reiterated off-stage to Windy City Times. "I've had no facial surgery or anything like that," she said. "It's OK if you want to but if you don't, you should be happy with that. I don't want to be that beautiful model, I want to be the beautiful me. This is plenty for me. We should all be beautiful in our own ways. I don't have to meet the expectations of a magazine cover. I don't want to be Barbie. I think it's unfair that we are being forced to meet expectations that hardly anybody can achieve."
Beck added that, even though she is tempted every day to just disappear quietly into society as a regular person working a regular job, she has a greater responsibility. "This is difficult but I'm doing it because we have to tell the stories," she said. "If my story has some visibility and I can tell it and motivate some other people into actually doing something, if I can give hope to one kid that she's not going to be stuck in life because she looks at me and says 'Kristin Beck was a Navy SEAL and I can be whatever I want to be' then I'm going to keep doing that. I don't want this to be about me. I don't want any pats on the back or any more medals. I want everything I am doing to point back to the next generation of kids."
As a woman who spent her life winning wars through the power of working with her teammates as an unbroken unit, Beck finds current divisions, not only in the LGBTQ umbrella, but particularly within the transgender community heartbreaking. "It's terrible," she said. "We can accomplish a lot if we come together and stop dividing. We divide each other as cross-dressers and transsexuals and drag queens and people keep adding so many other little divisions. A transgender woman of color is murdered every week in the United States. We're all targets. I want to help but, if people keep trying to separate me and closing the door, how can I do that?"
To the audience, Beck referred to the flags outside as "diversity flags."
"That rainbow flag is not about all those labels we put on each other, it's about diversity," she said. "This journey and what I'm doing doesn't mean anything if it's just me. Being out is not enough. It really takes a group effort. We have to be active [in] how we treat each other, how we respect each other and how we love each other as Americans."
After her transition, Beck received that level of support during an event with her former SEAL teams. There, she was singled out by one of the commanders of Seal Team Six. "He said, 'I've known Kris for 20 yearsalways been a good SEAL and that sister is still my brother.'"
A panel on coming out to your healthcare professional included Cecillia Hardacker of the Howard Brown Health Center. She spoke of the need for providers to make patients feel safe to come out.
"The VA has long been a patriarchal environment. For those who served under Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the outright ban before that, it takes courage to come out," she said. Providers need to be sensitive, learn how to ask open-ended questions while being ready to manage the reactions from veteran patients who hold a range of opinions and reactions to those questions, she added.
Also on the panel were Veronica Hernandez, an Air Force veteran who uses VA medical services; Jason Troutman, Psy. D. with the Adler School of Prpfessional Psychology, and Dr. Scott Pawlikowski, of Hines VA.
Pawlikowski pointed out that the VA still has a strict business model which includes only two boxes, M and F, to describe gender. The box checked triggers a range of gender-specific tests and protocols and, until changes are made to policy, will complicate truly patient-centered care.
Bridget Altenburg, a founder of Knights Out who worked for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," spoke of how things have changed since the repeal of the anti-gay policy.
"DADT repeal and implementation went smoothly. All of the things that some said would happeneveryone's going to resign and it'll be anarchynone of it happened," she said. "When I was on the hill lobbying congress with [Servicemembers Legal Defense Network], we told them that it hasn't been and won't be an issue. We said that we were gay, we were serving, had been serving, most of our solders knew and didn't care, and that there would be no issue. And that's the way it went. And I hope that all of us have had the experience now of working along with LGB solders and veterans because now that we don't have to be in the closet, while you are providing healthcare at the VA, you're getting to know your LGB brothers and sisters. And there's no difference. There's a common bond. Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population are willing to serve, so we need to have the very best servicemembers. These are people are standing up to serve and they deserve our respect.
"We are not there yet, there is a hodgepodge of issues due to the quasi-repeal of DOMA. A friend in NC can't get married with all the rights and privileges that come with being a married couple, but because I live in Illinois, I can. It all depends upon where the military sends her."
Karandeep Sraon, assistant director of Hines VA, gave the welcome. Dr. Jack Bulmash, Chief of Staff of the Hines VA Hospital made a presentation on the ever-improving philosophy and focus on patient-centered service.
Closing remarks were given by Jim Darby, outgoing president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Veterans for Equal Rights who introduced incoming president Lee Reinhart. Reinhart was discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," but returned to active duty after the repeal and has recently returned from service in Afghanistan.
Additional reporting by Jean Albright
See related aricle at the link: www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Veterans-Health-Administration-opens-doors-to-LGBT-vets/49044.html .