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MARCHING WITH WALT WHITMAN.

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From: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbiannewsmagazine)
Date: 20000430
Author:SCHMIDGALL, GARY

Fired from his government job for writing about his love of men, the great gay poet would have marched to end policies like "don't ask, don't tell"

What would Walt Whitman have thought about that prize example of inside-the-Beltway folly "don't ask, don't tell"? I'm pretty certain I know--not only from my experience writing Walt Whitman: A Gay Life, but also my experience as one of Uncle Sam's soldiers.

In the mid 1970s, when I was just coming out, I paid my first visit to the nation's capital, courtesy of the U.S. Army. I was a clerk in the Fifth Judge Advocate ...

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