Dan Choi tells Penn students now is the time to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell

When President Barack Obama reaffirmed his campaign pledge to end the military's policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell last month, many LGBT activists criticized the White House because it did not provide a specific timetable. Lieutenant Dan Choi, a former United States Army infantry officer and veteran of the Iraq war, faced the consequences of the policy after he came out on the Rachel Maddow Show in March. The military notified him a month later it had begun discharge procedures.

Choi came to the University of Pennsylvania's LGBT Center on Nov. 15 to speak to students and staff about his experiences as an openly gay member of the military and and LGBT activist. Since his announcement, Choi has become a spokesperson against Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He has appeared on CNN and ABC along with a myriad of appearances across the country.

Choi, 28, son of a southern Baptist Korean minister, said he had known he was gay since the fourth grade, but he did not have a boyfriend or girlfriend until he met his partner, Matthew, in 2008. At first, Choi referred to his partner as "Martha" among his fellow soldiers, but he said love made him realize the hypocrisy in the military's Cadet Prayer that promoted honesty and Don't Ask, Don't Tell that he maintains promotes secrecy.

"Other soldiers started to notice the change and said that I wasn't supposed to be happy-I was supposed to be miserable," Choi joked. "I wanted to tell everyone that I knew what the movies were talking about, but I had to lie because Don't Ask, Don't Tell enforces lying and that goes against everything that was enforced to me since I started at West Point."

Reflecting on the months after he came out to his friends and family, Choi elicited laughter from the audience after he compared his family life to comedian Margaret Cho's. Pressured by his mother to marry a Korean woman and lectured by his father on committing the "number one sin," Choi finally found acceptance when his father called him to tell him he was proud of him nine months after coming out as a gay man.

"So I ask you, when they advice us to wait, whether it's waiting to tell your parents who you are or committing acts of political activism, how can we wait when there are gay and lesbian soldiers in Iraq whose partners won't be notified if they are killed because it goes against Don't Ask, Don't Tell?" asked Choi.

After coming out on a national television network, many accused Choi of wanting celebrity status rather than bringing recognition to a controversial military policy. Choi claims, however, he did not have any media training and he had never heard of the Rachel Maddow Show until after he was on it.

"The main purpose of coming out to me wasn't for business sake or celebrity sake, but when we got email messages from soldiers in Iraq that didn't know if they wanted to go on with their lives because they were gay-we realized what were dealing with," Choi said. "For a lot of them, just knowing that they were not alone was enough for them to want to go on."

Choi wrote an open letter to the president on April 23 that asked him to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to allow him to return to his position as an infantry officer in the New York Army National Guard. Choi has yet to hear back directly from the commander-in-chief, but he voiced concern when asked about the White House's progress on repealing the policy.

"For a president in a time of two wars to kick out 600 soldiers, including 60 Arabic interpreters-you have to take responsibility and right now he's been elected to office for over a year now and he hasn't done anything to use his authority," he said. "It's now time for our leaders to stop worrying about political capital and start leading."