A Harmful Silence

Both Don Shirley’s Aug. 14 review of Mark Wolf’s “Another American: Asking and Telling” and Phil Cooke’s Counterpunch (“As Plays Get Preachy, the Story Sometimes Gets Lost,” Aug. 20) miss the point.

Each year the U.S. military fires more than 1,000 people because of their sexual orientation. Having interviewed 200 victims of military discrimination, Wolf humanizes their stories and explains how a government institution has destroyed their lives. If such storytelling does not move the debate forward, then what will?

Wolf presents the perspectives of both proponents and opponents of gays in the military. But to the extent that part of his show comes off as preaching, who says that preaching about politics doesn’t make for great theater? Critics for the New York Times and the Washington Post were moved by Wolf’s show.

Yes, it may be unabashed agitprop, to use a phrase from the Post, but to claim that the politics of good theater must somehow be subtle (as Cooke suggests) plays to the homophobic silence that surrounds many people’s experience of coming out in the military. Perhaps we need a few more two-by-fours hitting us squarely on the head to get the point across.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” has harmed the military as well as gay and lesbian soldiers. Wolf’s show forces us to confront a current example of our country’s legacy of institutionalized discrimination.

GEOFFREY BATEMAN

Assistant director, Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, University of California, Santa Barbara