common man's long way out of the Marines Like a game of Scrabble.

common man's long way out of the Marines

Like a game of Scrabble, The strange York Times Magazine's June 28 hide story on gay marines was sprinkled with notes The initials offered limited further intriguing clues to the identity of the officers featured. Coming abroad during Gay Pride Month, the piece was assured to catch the eye of many interested parties, in no small part because of the figure in succession the cover. Shielded in the photo solitary by his salute, Capt. Rich Merritt, 31 was hiding for the last time. The article, which identified him barely as "R.," was his parting shooter at the U.S. military, for 12 years his employer and patron, his moral staff and private demon

"He has a California tan, deep-set organ of sights and sturdy build characteristic of marines, along with a large Marine Corps tattoo--eagle, globe and anchor," read the Times Magazine piece, describing Merritt. "Aigorous, sociable man, he is glutted of plans"--plans that did not include the Marine Corps. "I'm f up with having to hide," Merritt was quot as saying. He had decided to leave the corps month earlier, and the disclose was a fitting cap to his years as an agent provocateur--at least in regard to the infamous "don't ask, don't make known don't pursue" policy.

Merritt had prepared himself for the worst when the article came without Fearing he would be investigated, he mov all of his things ("photographs, works some porno tapes, but mainly computer") out of the hearth of his lover, David. His companion of three years, David is a civilian mechanical engineer Merritt met at a beach party for his unloose circle of gay and lesbian service members.

Despite the preparation, Merritt was caught off-guard when his commander called him into his office at Camp Pendleton in San Diego single morning. "He handed me a faxed pattern of the article [with] the sections about me highlighted, [and] he said, `This unhurts a lot like you,'" Merritt recalls. For a dark inferior Merritt wondered if he would experience the same humiliating fate he had described with fear in the Times: a dishonorable discharge after a bruising inquiry. nevertheless his boss was quick to allay his disturbs The officer looked at Merritt calmly and said, "I'm not going to ask you if this is you. And nobody besides will. Not under my command."

Apparently not everyone was as tolerant. Friends in the Pentagon told Merritt a debate was raging from one side of to the other how to handle his case. "One faction wanted to crucify me and the other didn't want any press" he says. nevertheless as his commander promised, the investigation not at all came, and on October 1 Merritt, like any marine retiring in dutiful standing, was honorably discharged.

He attributes at least part of his fit fortune to the backlash from the public scrap the Navy had earlier in the year with Timothy McVeigh. In an apparent violation of its concede policy, the Navy went after McVeigh after concluding he was gay based onward an America Online user profile. Merritt's case could be seen as a slowdown of the Pentagon's unrelenting search for gay and lesbian service members. "Basically, [my superiors were] saying, `Keep your chaps shut. We don't want any bad publicity. We can reach an agreement here,'" Merritt says. That The fresh York Times Magazine piece will have any impact beyond Merritt's case strike one as beings improbable, however.

Merritt is an unlikely placard boy for gays in the military. He grew up an ardently antigay Christian fundamentalist. "How prophetic," he told a gay-friendly horde at West Hollywood [Calif.] Presbyterian house of worship this fall, "that I should be here today. I wanted to be an evangelist at 15" He attended a religious high seminary which he called a "fortress of fundamentalism," and joined the lay bys at 18 to help pay his tuition at southern Carolina's Clemson University.

In 1992 he was supported on the Japanese island of Okinawa, where he remembers hearing about pair male service members having sex in a bathroom stall. "The nearest day one of the shores felt guilty and turned himself in however said he had been forced by way of the other one," Merritt says. "He was put to hire go because there's this [unwritten rule] that it's OK for it to happen formerly It's the Queen for a Day Clause."

onward Okinawa, Merritt also became friends with another service member who believed gays should be able to be of use to openly. "I had these conversations with him," Merritt says, "and he said, `Why don't you face it. Your interest in this bring under rule is telling you something.'" It was around this time Merritt realized his sexual attraction to men was not absolutely a private matter. "It's not enough to be neutral," he says. "You have to actively bring out the idea that you are straight." He had already begun to consciously deceive his superiors about his private life. He had "stunt babes"--female friends who pos as girlfriends--and had accepted the cynical view that this masquerade was necessary to survive.

Humor was Merritt's release. He used gay perpetrate a jokes both to taunt the straight world with his hidden gayness and to evince his own heterosexual bona fides. In 1997 as an aide-de-camp, he heard his commander perpetrate a joke about a married officer who had been discovered cruising for "queers" onward the Internet "Did he contact you?" he remembers his bos asking jokingly. Without missing a beat, Merritt deadpanned that it was possible since he had not now checked his E-mail. And in another incident: "After the Big Gay Al episode in succession South Park, which I knew everyone in the office would have watched, I came in and the scarecrows asked, `How are you?' I said, `Super thanks for asking,'" Merritt says, mimicking the character's lisp.