Jason Knight, the sailor who was dismissed from the Navy for being gay and then called back to serve in Kuwait, will be booted again for violating the anti-gay policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' The Navy told Knight that at the end of last week.
His story has generated controversy since it first appeared on May 4 in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. In this exclusive interview, the 25-year-old Knight talks about his personal journey of self-discovery and service.
Jason Daniel Knight grew up in southeast Pennsylvania. He tried college but that didn't seem to be working out and he wasn't sure what he wanted to do so he joined the Navy at the age of 18. After basic training he was assigned to the ceremonial guard, waiting for a training cycle to open up as a Hebrew linguist at the military's famous language school in Monterrey, Calif.
In retrospect, he thinks he always knew that he was gay, but like a lot of people, 'because of religious and social pressures, I tried to push it away.' He started dating a girl while he was in the Navy. 'It was more of a friendship thing, but I figured, if I got married, maybe it will go away.'
MARRIAGE
They tied the knot in her home town of Boise, Idaho, in July 2004; he was 22. Both of them believed in waiting for marriage before having sex. However, Knight had yet to act on the attraction he felt toward men, either. Then came the moment of truth.
'On the wedding night, we tried. I couldn't perform; I just couldn't do it,' Knight says. 'It was then that I realized that I was hiding a lot from myself.'
He went back to Monterrey to continue his classes and struggle with the issue. His wife returned to Washington, D.C. 'She came out to see me for graduation about six weeks later, and that's when I told her.' She didn't take the news well, Knight says, 'Unfortunately, I lost a really good friend.'
They began the process to annul their marriage. When the paperwork came through, Knight presented it to the Navy. He says, 'I was going to do the honorable thing and tell my command. I hadn't really known a lot about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. I figured [ that ] if I told the truth, they'd understand. They didn't react well; they started the legal paperwork to get me out.'
But he was nearing the end of his four-year tour of duty when he would either have to reenlist or be discharged. 'I think what they did is, instead of drawing out the whole process, they dumped it and just discharged me' in April 2005. A note of DADT was never put into his personnel file. 'I guess the paperwork never got in my record; that is why they called me back.'
What the Navy did do was hit Knight with a bill for almost $13,000, a refund of his enlistment bonus tied to the discharge screw-up. Even before he was told that he owed them the money, the Navy seized his bank account and last military paycheck. It also grabbed his income tax refunds for the last two years, and garnished his wages.
'It was really hard. It threw me into debt. I lost my vehicle, it was really difficult to get by.' Knight says he 'wrote letters to a lot of congressmen but I didn't get any help.'
ROUND TWO
So, a little more than a year later, Knight was surprised to receive a letter from the Navy calling him back to serve. 'I had 30 days to report for duty. It was crazy.'
His roommate, a linguist who happened to be a lesbian, asked Knight, 'How are you going to go back and do that after all they did to you?'
But Knight had few second thoughts. He says, 'When you serve in the military, you get a sense of pride about it. Not everybody gets a chance to defend their country. I feel that everybody deserves that right.' He says, 'The military isn't bad—it's just full of bad people.'
He was called up in July 2006, and two weeks later was serving in Kuwait.
Knight was clear about one thing—he may be back in the military but he wasn't going back into the closet. He would do his job and not make waves. He says his colleagues knew he was gay. 'It didn't really bother anybody that I worked with,' he said. 'They all knew; it wasn't something that was a problem. We talked about it.'
'And then there was this story about [ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ] General [ Peter ] Pace [ calling gays immoral ] . It really floored me; I was really angry. I sent a little tiny blurb, a letter to the editor [ of Stars and Stripes ] with my own comments about it—I'm serving openly and how can he say this is immoral.
'I didn't even expect them to print the letter, and from the letter they wanted to do a whole story. It just went from there and snowballed.' Knight was back in San Diego by the time the media flurry hit.
His tour of active duty is supposed to end on May 28. Right now, he has a pending discharge code, which means he can be recalled to active duty again. But at the end of last week he was informed that the Navy intends to process him out under DADT. It's unclear whether that means just a change in paperwork or a formal proceeding that, ironically, may extend his time in uniform.
With his immediate future still up in the air, Knight has some time to think about the future. That includes going back to college and finishing up his degree, and perhaps even attending medical school. But for now, 'I think that I need to do something to help the gay community.' He is looking into volunteering with a couple of organizations.
