Chief Petty Officer Stuart O’Brien
Australian
Defence Forces
a
sailor's sailor
by
Denny
Meyer
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Australian
Defence Forces' Navy Chief Petty Officer Stuart
O'Brien recently returned from his second voluntary
tour of duty in Baghdad where he was awarded a United
States Meritorious Service Medal for his service in
Iraq. With his soft spoken Aussie twang, he is
the sort of ruggedly handsome sailor that makes
romantically minded Yanks break into a sweat and gives
you goose bumps. He is, perhaps, Australia's
most openly gay service member and has unassumingly
led the way in that nation's progress towards LGBT
equality in it's armed forces.
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After
several years of e-mail exchanges and live internet
chats between Baghdad and New York, I finally met with
Stu in Washington DC in March 2008 when he spoke at an
international conference on Sexual
Orientation and Military Preparedness at
Georgetown University Law Center.
We had a brief interview about his life and
service.
He'd
grown up in a rather religious, Church of
England, Australian family in a small town in
rural New South Wales. As a student
he was more interested in math than sports
(cricket and football); yet aside from vague
inklings, he really had no idea about being
gay. After completing school, when a
friend joined the Navy, he thought that military
service seemed like a good idea. Leaving
behind small-town life was part of the
motivation, and sea service seemed to be the
most exciting and interesting thing he could
possibly do. The Navy, also, was the
service that offered him the job he wanted to
do: being a writer (Yeoman, clerk -
Administration). In Australian military
recruiting, apparently, such promises are
genuine; he is now a senior writer, a Personnel
Officer.
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It
was only after he had served for about five
years, in the mid 1990s after the Australian
armed forces began to allow gay service members
to serve openly, that he began to realize he was
gay. Other than the usual sort of self
realization, there was no trauma from societal
nor military discrimination. He told a few
friends and was able to be honest with anyone
who asked. As word spread, he routinely
let his superiors know as well.
The
only real shock came when he was home visiting
for his grandmother's 90th birthday celebration.
He'd been told that his mother was going to ask
him about his newly realized orientation.
At the gathering, she asked him, "Anything
you want to tell me?"
Still being a bit shy about the whole business,
he replied, "No, not really.."
And she said, "it's all right, we've always
known, for a long time."
Quite surprised, he told her, "Well you
could have told me, it would have been a lot
easier."
In
typical Australian mentality, not only was his
family not in the slightest concerned; on the
contrary, his mother was so proud of him being
gay in the service that she went all over town
telling everyone!
March 2008
Washington DC Conference
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I
asked him how he had become, essentially, the
Australian Defence Force's gay poster boy.
He said, "Idon't think I am; I just have
the loudest voice." People knew him
and the work he was doing to develop equal
rights for LGBT military personnel; they came to
him to ask questions on how to proceed.
This led him to launch DEFGLIS
(Defence
Gay & Lesbian Information Service)
which has become a resource that is even used by
the armed forces as a reference and guide. |
It
all began in 2001 when he and his
partner requested military recognition
as a couple for the purpose of certain
benefits routinely available to opposite
sex partners in Australia (a couple need
not be married, in Australia for access
to benefits. He wanted his partner
to be considered a dependent, just as
spouses and opposite sex partners are in
Australia). When the then Chief of
Defence denied the privilege, saying
that he would not change military
internal policy as it was linked to
Federal Legislation and would only do so
if directed to by the government,
O'Brien wrote to Australia's Sex
Discrimination Commissioner to inform
her that Australia's non-discrimination
act was being misinterpreted to actually
discriminate against lesbian and gay
service members in the military.
He
continued to campaign for his rights, within
the system. In 2005 the new Chief
of Defence responded to that and similar
requests, and simply changed the policy
in favor of same sex partner
recognition.
At
sea duty, O'Brien had not heard about the change
until he got an e-mail, "Congratulations on
the policy change!" "WHAT policy
change?" He e-mailed back, clueless.
When the next message told him that ,"same
sex recognition has just gone through Defence,"
he said, "I ran around the ship, like a
chicken with it's with my head chopped off,
trying to find a copy of the signal advising of
the change." His shipmates joined him in
celebrating that evening; they had assumed that
he'd had those rights all along, along with his
right to serve.
Although
Defence did not publicize the policy change, it
was in all the Australian newspapers the next
day, with positive response from the public and
veterans groups all of whom supported the new
policy and were surprised that it had not
already been in effect.
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The
policy change process in Australia began
in 1992 when a government directive
caused the Defence Forces to issue new
rules of behavior that applied equally
to heterosexuals and homosexuals, which
essentially removed discrimination
against open service. This was the
culmination of a process begun in the
1980s when Australia adopted
international human rights accords.
The military had initially resisted the
change with the usual objections and had
tried to use the earlier human rights
legislation to exclude homosexual
service in the armed forces. Prime
Minister Paul Keating's order reflected
the accepting nature of the Australian
culture aswell as the attitude of
younger military personnel who also were
willing to serve alongside gay and
lesbian service members. In the
years that followed, the ADF has had an
ongoing evolving process of developing
enhancements to assure monitoring,
education, training, equal rights
privileges such as the opening up
of Defence housing to same sex couples
in 2005, and the enabling of benefits
for children of same sex couples.
Chief O'Brien has been instrumental in
many of the initiatives that have led to
improvement for LGBT service members. |
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The
week before Chief O'Brien's visit to
Washington DC saw the first official
contingent in the Sydney Gay &
Lesbian Mardi Gras of Defence Force
personnel. "We had approximately 80
personnel representing the Navy, Army,
Air Force and Defence Civilians. It was truly an amazing
night;
this is something that the Gay and
Lesbian members of the Defence Force has
been waiting for for a long time". |
Has
there been any discrimination or harassment
since the policy change? As with all the
other of our allied countries that have allowed
open gay service for nearly 15 years, there have
been almost no problems at all. In
Australia, according to Chief O'Brien,
harassment of any kind is taken very
seriously, with some cases dealt with by civil
police; cases have seen service members
discharged for continuing to harass and/or
discriminate. In essence, there is no
tolerance for bigots in Australia's armed
forces.
©
2008 Gay Military Signal
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