We spoke to Bess (she/her/sister) on July 9, 2026 in Rochester, NY. Bess served in the US Army from 1976 to 1982, and she was honorably discharged as a Specialist 5. She enlisted at a time when she needed direction and a way out of poverty and a dysfunctional family. The Army was an obvious option because Bess’s father had served in the Second World War, and it was an attractive choice because it offered her an opportunity “to see the world and experience what other people were like.” 

Bess was not out when she enlisted, but she remembered joking with recruiters that “there [were] a bunch of lesbians in the Army.” She enjoyed the camaraderie of her all-women basic training and soon found a community of “like-minded” people. When she started a relationship another woman, she recalled that they often had to be “sneaky” but that “if you did a good job and kept your nose clean, people didn’t bug you. They let you live your life.” 

However, Bess experienced several incidents that disillusioned her. She was called before the Army Criminal Investigation Division during a witch hunt when her name appeared on a list of suspected LGBT service members. She denied the accusation, and she described the incident as humiliating. Some years later, she and her friends were attacked outside of a lesbian bar in Germany, and she felt angry that she couldn’t report it for fear of being outed. She also begrudged that she couldn’t participate in the White Night riots while she was stationed in San Francisco because she was in the military. 

Bess has many positive memories of her time in the Army, but ultimately could not reconcile with a core question: “How can you live honorably when you have to deny who you are?” She told us that she would have made it a career if she could have been out as a lesbian. Instead, she left the military and built a vibrant life as a librarian, LBGTQ rights advocate, labor activist, and community member. Bess has spent a long time undoing internalized homophobia from her time in the Army, but she lives today as a proud out lesbian in Rochester, NY with her wife Anne.