Ousted Lewis County gay officer: Time to stop 'lie'

MORTON, Lewis County — Standing before the Loggers' Jubilee field on Friday afternoon where the lawnmower races were to take place later that night, former Army Capt. Jonathan Hopkins said it's time for the best, most powerful military in the world to allow gays to serve in the armed forces.

"If we can't handle a social change like that, when everybody else can, then that's just unfortunate," the Morton native said, referring to Israel, England, Canada and Australia — countries that changed their laws and accept gays in the military.

Hopkins, once the fourth-ranking graduate of West Point out of 933 cadets and an officer who led three combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, was kicked out of the Army for being gay. His last day of service was Tuesday in Fairbanks, Alaska. He left behind — grudgingly — nine years of risking his life and training soldiers.

"I love the Army, I've always loved the Army. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent nine years depriving myself of the ability to have happy personal relationships with others," Hopkins, 31, said on "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC Wednesday night.

Fourteen months ago, on the same day he learned he was going to be promoted to major a year early, Hopkins was told by his battalion commander that he had been outed for being gay. After years of paranoia — he didn't fully realize he was gay until after graduating from West Point — the fatigue of living a lie had caught up with him.

"It's a job that we risk dying doing, and yet we have to be more scared of somebody realizing we're gay, more paranoid about that, than whether the enemy is going to blow us up," Hopkins said, referring to the more than 14,000 gay people who have been kicked out of the military. "You have to keep that all secret and tell lots of lies."

Hopkins was ready for personal freedom.

"I personally sacrificed my ability to have any sort of personal relationship that would have made me probably a better commander," Hopkins said. "It helps you to be balanced and helps give you support at home. Because everybody needs that."

Hopkins' boyfriend of 10 months, Finely Bock, of Ninilchik, Alaska, attended the Loggers' Jubilee with him to soak in the "Morton Indy Car" lawnmower race and other sights and sounds of Hopkins' childhood before the couple depart Sunday for a road trip to Virginia.

Hopkins plans to attend Georgetown University, where he'll study for a master's degree in national security policy.

Bock said the soldiers Hopkins led in Alaska were "very accepting" toward him and his relationship with Hopkins after it was revealed.

When Hopkins came out, he said his friends and family had a hard time accepting it. He finally told his mother he's gay last Christmas.

"But they told me later — I had a couple fellow captains, they couldn't sleep for a couple nights very well, because they had a view of me as an officer they very much respect and wanted to emulate," he said, "in using their words."

On "The Rachel Maddow Show," he said he had always been suspected of being gay.

"There's not too many unmarried captains and commanders in the Army," the 1997 Morton High School graduate said. "I lived a government-mandated lie."

But at the same time, especially for the soldiers who figured he was gay while he was leading them in the Middle East, people would also say " 'But he's a good commander,' " Hopkins said. There was "an environment of mutual respect."

Hopkins said gays who currently serve in the military are essentially under a gag order: "You pretend you're straight, or you're out."

"Full disclosure is a wonderful thing," he said.