There is nothing more frightening than being in a life-threatening situation and being alone, surrounded only by strangers and no familiar, loving face.

Except I was not alone. I had a partner: we lived together, owned a house and a car together, had published books together, fostered a child together. But because we were lesbians, not husband and wife, hospital personnel said she could not be with me as I lay in critical condition in the cardiac intensive care unit. 

Doctors worked on me for several hours in the ER, but there was no change. My irregular and rapid heart rate (280 beats a minute makes you feel like your heart will explode) had not responded to the usual treatments. I was put on IVs with two different drugs that were supposed to re-convert my heart rate to normal within 24 hours. Until then, I would be admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit for round-the-clock monitoring.   

Eventually the doctors had to shock my heart (it’s nothing like on TV–it’s like having someone toss a flaming truck at your chest repeatedly) several times to re-start it properly. At one point the head of cardiology was standing over my bed with students explaining how AF is one of the major causes of stroke, partficularly in people under 40, like I was.

I spent several days in CICU. I was about 40 years younger (or more) than every other patient in the unit. I was also among the sickest while I was there. But unlike everyone else in CICU, I had to fight to have my partner with me. Why? Because I am a lesbian and my partner was another woman.

At the time I was in the CICU, I was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and I the only lesbian in the country writing a column about being a lesbian for a daily newspaper. My editor, who was a straight married man, thought it was time to have a lesbian voice at a daily.

So from my bed in the CICU, I wrote about what it was like to have to fight to be with your spouse when you were also fighting for your life. I was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize that year, in part for that column. 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had been law for about a year when I had my non-battlefield life-threatening experience. I wasn’t in the military, obviously. But in the years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq I have often thought how awful it must be for our gay and lesbian soldiers to be alone when they are fighting for their country.

Imagine, for example, being Eric Alva, a Marine staff sargeant in Iraq. Here’s what Alva told the House Armed Services Committee hearings in July 2008:

I joined the military because I wanted to serve; I joined the Marines because I wanted a challenge. I was 19 years old. I was patriotic, idealistic. I was also gay.

For 13 years I served in the Marine Corps. I served in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. I loved the discipline and the camaraderie, what I hated was concealing part of who I am.

My military service came to an end on March 21, 2003. It was the first day of the ground war in Iraq; mine was one of the first battalions in. Three hours into the invasion, we had stopped to wait for orders. I went back to the Humvee to retrieve something — to this day I can’t remember what –and, as I crossed that dusty patch of desert for the third time that day, I triggered a landmine.

I was thrown through the air, landing 10 or 15 feet away. The pain was unimaginable. My fellow marines were rushing to my aid, cutting away my uniform to assess the damage and treat my wounds. I remember wondering why they weren’t removing my right boot — it wasn’t until later that I realized it was because that leg was already gone.

Alva was discharged from the Marines after losing a leg and part of an arm to that landmine.

Alva is just one of about 13,000 men and women discharged from the military since DADT was initiated. But he’s representative of the valor with which so many lesbians and gay men have served in the military despite the often gruesome repression of DADT.

Majority America and even the majority of the military don’t have to consider what it means to be isolated from everything familiar and safe in moments of crisis or pain. If you are ill, you have your husband or wife with you in  the hospital. If you are serving in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan  and you are injured,  your wife or husband can visit you in the hospital or at the very least  talk to you on the phone or on Skype.

Not so for gay men and lesbians.

There are five states in the nation where same-sex marriage is legal, several others where civil unions are the law and in California, 18,000 gay and lesbian couples are also legally married. Yet if any of these married couples is serving in today’s military, their spouse cannot contact them if they are injured, no matter how severely.  

I know what it is like to be fighting for your life and not be able to have your spouse with you because of institutionalized bigotry. But I wasn’t also serving on a battlefield. My story, while harrowing, was not the same as Staff Sgt. Alva’s story. Imagine your leg blown off and not being able to talk to the person you love because of the segregation in today’s military.

One of the most disappointing voices in the renewed debate over DADT has been that of Sen. John McCain. McCain knows better than almost any other member of the Senate what it is to be a wounded warrior alone and suffering. And yet he would continue to impose that on gay men and lesbians giving their limbs and lives for this nation. As the new hearings begin on DADT, McCain’s voice has been among the strongest in opposition to changing the law.

Contravening McCain is Rep. Patrick Murphy. I would suggest we listen to him, rather than McCain.

Not to impugn McCain’s service, but Murphy served in Iraq, and the 40 years of difference between McCain’s years of service and Murphy”s are telling. Like McCain, Murphy had devoted his life to the military until he ran for office.

Except Murphy sponsored a bill last term to overturn DADT. When he made the announcement in Philadelphia, he noted that his wife had given him great comfort and he could not imagine depriving other soldiers of the support of a loved one.

Murphy also noted that  he served with gay and lesbian military personnel. He noted that everyone knew that gay men and lesbians were in the military already and so the only real issue was allowing them to serve without lying.

Lt. Dan Choi has been an outspoken opponent of DADT and last May wrote to President Obama to ask that his incipient discharge be stopped. Choi had come out on the Rachel Maddow Show in March 2009 when he was discussing DADT.

The U.S. military really cannot afford to lose Choi, an engineer and an Arab linguist. Like Murphy, Choi, 29, has spent his entire adult life in the military since his gradutation from West Point. His discharge is still pending.

Choi was speaking to BBC World News on Monday about the new hearings on DADT. He noted that the discourse over morale was specious: Everyone is already serving with gay men and lesbians; an estimated 16 percent of the current military is gay or lesbian.

Choi is especially concerned about “foot dragging” among those, from President Obama to Secretary of Defense Gates to the Joint Chiefs who say that it’s time to change the policy. Since Obama took office 644 lesbians and gay men have been discharged under DADT. How many more will be discharged in another year? How many will be lying every hour of every day as they risk their lives for this country and their fellow soldiers?

Of particular outrage for me were yesterday’s comments by Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Chambliss argued that straight men would essentially freak out at the prospect of homosexual sex acts in the military.

Let’s just look at Chambliss for a moment, shall we? Chambliss avoided serving in Vietnam by taking deferrments. Then he ran against incumbent Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet who was also a triple amputee. When he ran against Cleland he ran a campaign targeting Cleland as unpatriotic, superimposing the face of Osama bin Laden next to Cleland’s.

So let’s just pretend Chambliss isn’t that guy already. If Chambliss had ever been in the military or knew anything about the military, he’d know that sex between military personnel is against the rules. Period. So it’s not an issue. And Chambliss might also have noticed that women now comprise more than 20 percent of the Armed Forces. Is he also objecting to women being in the military? Because the likelihood of sexual acts between male and female personnel is far greater than that between straight guys and gay men. Really.

But let’s ignore the human component altogether. The cost of training and then losing people like Alva and Choi has cost, according to the Pentagon, upwards of $400 billion. Even Gen. Colin Powell who authored DADT now says it is time to repeal the law.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald quotes the following in an update on his column on DADT today:

Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified today that “it is his ‘personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do’.”  On Twitter, he added (yes, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on Twitter):

Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do. Comes down to integrity.

The bottom line in this debate is decency–or as Admiral Mullen notes, integrity. Last week the Woolworth’s lunch counter that was the site of a major civil rights action in 1960 was turned into a civil rights museum  in downtown Greensboro, N.C.

Fifty years ago it was unthinkable that blacks and whites eat at the same lowly Woolworth’s counter. Today most people can’t imagine why people of different races eating at the same lunch counter was ever an issue.

It is imperative that Congress not listen to the McCains and Chamblisses in this debate, but to the Murphys, Alvas and Chois. Or even to someone like myself, who knows what it is to fight for one’s life all alone Not because your spouse doesn’t want to be with you, but solely because of bigotry and segregation.

I simply cannot bear the thought of one more Eric Alva lying in a bed, wounded, unable to call his boyfriend or husband because it will mean dismissal. Or having to lie on his deathbed. Dragging this debate out for yet another year—it’s already been 17–is useless. Listen to Alva, Choi and Murphy: they just came from the war zone. Murphy didn’t care that he was serving with gay men. Choi and Alva wanted to serve with valor—and lying about who you are isn’t valorous.

DADT must end. President Obama still retains the power to end discharges under DADT with a stop-loss order. He could, as I wrote here  after he appeared at HRC in October, do it now, today. That would force the hands of the Chamblisses and McCains.

Today’s military needs people like Alva and Choi. The idea that we would sacrifice the lives of other military personnel just to maintain segregation and institutionalized bigotry is not just absurd, it’s obscene. DADT must be repealed.—VAB