#the US Naval Intelligence Service couldn't crack the simple code | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nerdygaymormon · 3 years

Text

Mel Dahl - Friend of Dorothy

Homosexual activity has been has been a reason to be discharged from the US military since the Revolutionary War. As the USA prepared to enter World War II, the military, in addition to its regular efforts to find gay, lesbian and bisexual service members and boot them from service, added processes to try to identify “homosexual” recruits and prevent them from joining,

During his campaign for the presidency, Bill Clinton pledged to lift the ban on gay troops, but faced opposition from senior military personnel and powerful Congressional leaders.

The compromise they reached and implemented in 1994 was the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which meant the military wouldn’t actively search for gay, lesbian or bisexual personnel nor ask about a person’s sexual orientation, but if the military discovered someone is LGB, they could be discharged. Thus as long as the LGB individual didn’t share about their personal life at work or with military colleagues while off base, they should be able to serve. A truly imperfect and problematic policy, but a step forward.

This “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy remained in effect for 17 years, until being repealed by Pres. Obama. Openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people have been allowed to serve in the US armed forces since the repeal.

—————————

When Mel Dahl enrolled in the Navy in 1980, a military doctor asked the standard question of whether he’s gay, and Mel admitted he was. He completed basic training and applied for clearance to be a cryptographer. As part of that process, he again was asked if he is gay and his truthfulness got him a dishonorable discharge.

He fought his discharge in court, even walking coast-to-coast in 1981 to publicize his case. It took 13 years of court battles, but in 1994 a judge finally ruled his dismissal unconstitutional and the Navy agreed to pay him 4 year’s worth of back wages. During the media interest early in the legal battle, Mel told a reporter that a great many gay men served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center where he was stationed.

A witch hunt for gay sailors at the Great Lakes base ensued. The Naval Intelligence Service launched a full-scale investigation to identify a presumably massive homosexual network. They followed Mel Dahl and would secretly go through his possessions trying to find clues.

Naval intelligence discovered and infiltrated a gay Christian group that tried to worship weekly on base and everyone who was participating was discharged.

The Navy sent investigators to gay bars in the Chicago area to discover gay sailors. Investigators were paid to pose as gay men, to drink and dance and introduce themselves to other patrons, trying to identify who might be in the military.

During these trips to the gay bars, they noticed that many gay men identified themselves as “a friend of Dorothy.” The Intelligence Service figured that “Dorothy” must be a woman who organized a city-wide ring of gay servicemen. If they could find her, they figured they could “convince” her to talk, perhaps outing many gay navy personnel, who with a little pressure could be persuaded to identify many other gay men in the Navy so they all could be booted out.

The key was to find Dorothy. The NIS sent investigators to the gay bars to ask questions about this mystery woman. At one point, someone managed to convince them that a real-life woman officer named Dorothy was who they were after. She was very religious and anti-gay and this was a way of getting back at her for her bigotry. Spies followed her for months, never finding any associations with gay people, and concluded they had the wrong Dorothy.

They never found Dorothy

—————————

An interesting aside, while this investigation, and many others, focused on gay men, in the late 1980s there was a perception that the military was unfairly not working so hard to discover lesbians in the ranks.

Vice Admiral Joseph S. Donnell sent out a memo urging his subordinates to ferret out lesbians in the Navy. His memo included this helpful tip for identifying lesbians:

“Experience has shown that the stereotypical female homosexual in the Navy is hard-working, career-oriented, willing to put in long hours on the job and among the command’s top professionals.”

Wouldn’t want their kind!

Military records indicate that in the 1990′s, being a woman who was also a member of a naval sports team, like softball or basketball, was enough to get the person onto the “potential lesbian” list, with Naval Intelligence scouting the games and taking pictures of the players to add to their investigation files.

————————————————————

The phrase “Friend of Dorothy” first popped up in the 1940’s, and for many decades was a way for gay people to indicate someone is gay. The “Dorothy” in question is the main character from the Wizard of Oz.

At a time when it was illegal to be gay and society was strongly homophobic, it was handy to have a phrase that allowed gay men to identify themselves to each other without actually saying they’re gay. When meeting another person, the gay man could say, “I’m a friend of Dorothy,” and if the other man were gay, he likely understands exactly what is being said. But if he isn’t gay, he’d probably think the individual thought they had a mutual friend named Dorothy.

Some believe that the phrase is derived from book The Road To Oz (1909), a sequel to the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In that book, Polychrome (Oz) says, “You have some queer friends, Dorothy.” She replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends.”

The movie The Wizard of Oz delighted audiences and was so popular that from 1959 until the 1990′s, it was broadcast annually as a television special on American television.

Dorothy’s journey from Kansas to Oz mirrored gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of their small-town life for the big, colorful cities.

The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion are misfits who don’t conform to the roles society has given them, and yet Dorothy immediately accepts them. The Tin Man is constantly getting emotional and crying and needing to be lubed up. The Scarecrow can’t frighten a crow nor anything else. The Cowardly Lion identifies himself as a “sissy,” says “there’s no denyin’, I’m a dandy lion,” and behaves in a stereotypically effeminate way.

Gay men are often accused of being less masculine than straight men and could see themselves in these characters. Dorothy meeting & accepting them is often interpreted as her meeting & accepting gay men without question. It didn’t matter to Dorothy if others were different, it was their character that mattered.

The phrase “Friend of Dorothy” isn’t nearly as widely known nowadays in the LGBT community thanks to the changes in the law and societal attitudes.

—————————

I learned the British equivalent of “Friend of Dorothy” is “Friend of Mrs. King” (aka, Queen, as in a "gay man"). “Do you know if Nigel is a friend of Mrs. King?”

#Mel Dahl #Friend of Dorothy #hahaha #the US Naval Intelligence Service couldn't crack the simple code #shows how effective it was #gays knew it and straights did not #queer history

58 notes · View notes