What We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Outspoken podcast Network.
When I had to go back to work to drive through those gates, I had to be that soldier again, and that's what I just kept telling myself, You're a soldier. And there were days when I was leaving I would just pull over to side the road and cry because I could not hold it in anymore.
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode, we'll learn about the US military's ban on gay people and how the loss of a partner to AIDS pushed one gay soldier to fight back against that ban. From My Heart Podcast, I'm Jordan and Solves,
and this is what We Loved. Living a double life is a reality for many queer people. For me, my double life ended right before I graduated college. That's when I came out to my friends and my family. Shortly after I started working at this big tech company. I was twenty one and I was nervous about being out at work. I was worried that they might treat me differently, but it was actually very welcoming culture. There was even a group just for queer employees, and I met some
amazing queer friends through that. I was really lucky. If I'm being honest, I had no idea that the freedom that I had to be out and proud in the workplace was because of the many sacrifices that the queer people before me had made. Danny Ingram is one of those people. He was a gay soldier in the nineteen eighties, when there was a ban on gay people serving in the military. If he came out at work, or was
even found out to be gay, he'd be fired. During the eighties, the decade when he was serving, an average of one thousand, five hundred service members a year would be fired just for being gay. The ban wasn't anything new. Some form or another of this band had actually did it all the way back to the Revolutionary War. For many years, gay people were considered mentally ill and a
liability to the military. During the Cold War, gay people were thought of as Communist sympathizers, but by the eighties, the justification was about morality. The official policy from that time said, the presence of homosexuals adversely affects the ability of the military services to maintain discipline, good order, and morale. Danny kept his head down and did his job, But this was also when gay men across America were dying because of AIDS, including Danny's partner Daryl. Keeping this a
secret became unbearable. He couldn't say a word to any of his supervisors or his colleagues out of fear of being fired. He watched his community and his partner, Daryl suffered from AIDS with little sympathy from the government. Angry, he became an activist. He knew that if queer people were ever going to survive the AIDS epidemic, they needed to be seen in society. They needed to have the option of being out at work. He needed to be out at work, So in an act of protest, Danny
risked his livelihood and came out to the military. He would go on to become one of the most important figures in ending the ban on gay people in the military. But before we get there, I wanted to know why Danny joined the military in the first place. Knowing that people like him were banned. Why did you decide to join the army.
I believed that it would make me feel better about myself.
There was.
There was tremendous shame about being gay at that time, and I wanted my father to love me. Members of my family had actually served in the military since the Revolutionary War, so it was it was something that I thought, Okay, if I can wear my country's uniform, I will feel better about myself and my father will love me. And I thought it would fix me. I thought that hyper masculine environment it would fix me, and I did feel better about myself.
I found the military to be you know, if you did your job well, people respected you, and I did my job very well. I was one of the best soldiers in my unit all the time, so I felt good about it.
It was really a great fit for me.
So you were really good at your job, best in your unit. But you are gay and there's a ban on gay people. So how did that ban affect your life?
Yeah, there was that very hidden aspect while I was in the military, and that's not easy to do. When you're hanging out with your other buddies and they're talking about you know, who they're dating and what's going on and everything. And I did not like the fact that I was being told there was something I could not
do which would serve my country. And I remember the whole issue was being discussed at the time in the military, and I remember I was not out, but we'd all be sitting around in the warehouse and people talked about it. So the younger guys were very negative. We don't want them here, we don't want them in the military. The older guys, particular, the Vietnam veterans, they didn't have a problem with it, they said, and their words, not mine.
They said, we had fags when we were in Vietnam, and they were perfectly fine with us as long as they could shoot. So I knew I had allies, even though I was not out to them, but I just didn't talk about it. I just didn't share it with them.
Okay, So shifting gears a little bit, tell me about what was going on outside of work. What was gay life like in the seventies.
Being gay was a party. It was a party. Our whole social life centered around the bar and the disco.
Do you have a memory, Oh, I have many memories tell me your favorite one.
Well, my favorite group was Abba and With Dancing Queen Dancing Queen. So we would dance as a group usually, and when one of their songs came on, we would take a hit of poppers and just go wild on the dance floor in your tight clothes, tight clothes, enjoying our youth and each other. The music was pounding, it was hot and sweaty. You lots of guys dance with your shirts off. It was all joy and happiness, just
a big party. We worked during the day, you know, to get by, and then we went out, and that's what our lives centered around, was going out and partying.
It sounds like even though you were closeted at work, life outside of work was vibrant.
Oh absolutely, it was great being comfortable, being open and free. The only place we could do that. It's like just having chains around you during the day, but in the evening you could go out and be yourself and you didn't have to lie to anyone. So when those songs came on, it was a religious experience on the danceflom. Music, alcohol, a little bit of drugs, and I just fell high.
And your best friends.
Yeah, my best friends, and I'll never forget, Never forget. The village people had a song out called Ready for the Eighties. So on New Year's Eve at the club at the bar, we were listening to that song and little did we know, little did we know what was about to hit our community. We were so excited about a new decade where progress was being made. We were not political people at that time. And then AIDS hit and the party stopped.
When we come back, Danny begins to understand the urgency of ending the military band when he falls in love with his partner Daryl, who is dying of AIDS. It's nineteen eighty eight and AIDS is devastating the gay community. It has become the third leading cause of death among young men in America. Four years later, in nineteen ninety two, it would become number one. With no effective treatment like there is today, people diagnosed with HIV, the virus that
turns into AIDS, thought it was a death sentence. In many cases, AIDS patients would rapidly lose weight, purple skinly would form all over their body, and cancers would develop too before they eventually died. Most people with AIDS were young, between the ages of twenty and forty years old. According to the CDC, Danny had begun losing friends and felt as though the government wasn't doing enough to prevent these deaths.
He was in the army and closeted at work, but began volunteering for AIDS relief outside of his job, trying to give back to the community as much as he could. Little did he know he was about to meet someone who would change the course of his life. Tell me about how you met Darryl.
The church that I was going to had an event every Tuesday night where we would serve a formal dinner to people living with a's, where they could sit down at a table with each other and discuss what was working for them, what therapies they were doing, where they were getting their drugs. Who was a good doctor. But I met him there. I remember serving him iced tea and he was a huge flirt.
You've got a big smile on your food.
Yeah, he was really cute. He had dark hair, not much facial hair at all. He was taller than me, as most human beings are, and he was just very outgoing, very witty and very sweet. I remember was pouring his tea and he said, well, you know you can. You could pour it on me and lick it off. So
it was like, okay, well that's that's definitely flirting. But he invited me out, and I did get invited out often at those events, but I usually didn't because I knew, you know, you really didn't first of all, cross the line between a volunteer and someone you're helping, but also because we knew there was no future in it. But with him it was different.
Yeah. So I guess when you say that, Danny, so many questions come to my mind, like, you know, what made you want to enter into a long term relationship with someone that you knew was dying.
As someone has said to me before, the heart wants what the heart wants. It's not logical. You fall in love with someone, and when you fall in love, you get stupid, So you know, you you don't really think about that. Love conquers all. So you know, we thought, okay, in our love, we will get through this together. I will be there for you, and we will get through
this together. And as time went on and his disease progressed, it did become clear that he was going to die, and we made the most of every time we had together, and we had about three years together.
How did you spend your time together?
Well, at that point we had all become quite political with fighting for the government to provide support for the AIDS community, which you can say they were caught off guard, or they didn't take it seriously, or the wrong people had the disease, which is I think the reality of it. So he was also an activist, as was I. So we did a lot of things together.
What were some of your favorite memories with him?
One of my favorite memories. The diseases that a lot of the guy's got was called wasting disease, and it had happened to him, and he had found a new therapy where they would install an access port on their chest and they would take nutrition through that. So he had gained back a lot of weight and a lot of energy. He was looking great and feeling great, and he wanted to go visit his mother in Tennessee. And
it was the fourth of July. So we drove up to very rural Tennessee and I met his mother, who was who certainly she was glad that her son had someone who loved him. And I remember hot, hot July night sitting out watching the fireworks. We both felt good.
He looked great. So it was away from all of the politics and the marches and the fundraising and the content stint activity, and it was just peaceful and just just he and I. You know, you live in the South, you have hot, steamy Southern nights, and you're sticky, you're drinking a cold when and you're just sitting out in the porch looking up at the sky and watching the fireworks. That was you know, that's good. It's as good as it gets.
Really.
We'd kiss every once in a while. His mother went inside, so it was just the two of us. When you're in love with somebody and you look into their eyes and nothing else matters.
It sounds so simple.
That that weekend was simple. That weekend was simple. You know, sometimes you have those where you need to just get away from it all, and that was a nice, simple, healthy, no worry weekend. And then of course we we went back into reality again.
I'm curious to know who was Darrell to you during these three years. Well, he was.
He was my partner. I was also his caregiver. He was my inspiration to see the challenges that he faced and that he faced them with with tremendous courage, and so he was very inspiring to me, and we loved each other. We never had sex in the three years really together because he was terrified that he would infect me with with HIV, and of course we knew all about safe sex, which was huge. Then he did not want to go there, and I was okay with that
because just to be with him was enough. I mean, to sleep beside him was enough for me.
Was that ever something you missed or did you just not.
Care when you're in love with somebody again, that love really is all encompassing. I never thought about it, to be honest. Just touching him it was all I needed hearing his voice.
Do you mind describing what it was like when the illness started to progress so our listeners can get an understanding of what this was like for the thousands of men that we're dealing with this And how old were you guys?
By the way, he was twenty eight when he died. I was about thirty three. So the disease would the immune system was so weak, and infections would come along and they would be serious, and then there were trips to the hospital. Those trips became more frequent. The therapy that he was taking that allowed him to gain weight stopped working, so he lost all the weight again. It became very, very thin. And on Christmas Eve of nineteen ninety three, he said, we have to go to the hospital.
And I started crying, and he he just he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, not from you, not from you. I'll take tears from everyone else, but not from you. And we had to carry him to the car and then take him to the emergency room. And we called his mother and she came, and the doctors pulled us both out in the hall. Now I had no control over his medical decisions at all. Once his mother was there, it was all up to her. She was next of ken. I had no rights whatsoever
when it came to his medical care. And so the doctors pulled us out in the hall and they said, his kidneys are failing. We could do an operation and start dialysis, but we don't recommend it. And they looked at both of us and we knew what that meant. He was going to die. And then and then it became the long wait. Friends came and went to say goodbye.
His brother was called to come and we sat there watching that little machine on the wall that beeps, and it got lower and lower and lower until it flatlined, and then he was gone. I was holding him in my arms as he died, and and and he went out that way. He went out knowing that he he was not alone, and that he was loved and at that time that we had together, which was very unusual for two gay men. We'll always touch my heart.
While all of this is happening with Daryl and you, you're still serving in a military that bans gay people. So Darryl passes away, and then you go back into the military where you can't even talk about this. Right.
Yes, when I had to go back to work, drive through those gates, I had to be that soldier again. And that's what I just kept telling myself, you're a soldier. And there were days when I was leaving the unit for the day, I would just pull over the side of the road and cry because I could not hold it in anymore.
So when you came back from Christmas, I mean, we're people saying how was your Christmas break? And you were saying, good, how was yours? Again?
Most of my life was private, and they were accustomed to that, and I certainly did not want them to know that I had someone with HIV disease, because the ignorance around that was, you know, huge, So I did not want them to associate me with AIDS. That was one of the things that the other side frequently used as an argument to keep gay men out of the military, was saying that they will bring AIDS into the military. So I did not. I spoke with no one, and
I had friends who had it worse. I had a friend who was a test pilot and his partner died and he had to fly a plane the next day without telling anyone or doing anything about it, before the funeral was even planned. He had to go get in that plane and fly that that test aircraft. One of the many, many, many sacrifices that LGBT people made while they were serving in the military and simply had to keep their lives private, sacred.
When Daryl passed away in nineteen ninety three, Danny was devastated and angry. Sharing with anyone in the military that your life partner had just died because of AIDS would absolutely be grounds for discharge. But this is what motivated him to end the band. Once and for all. He knew that being out in the military was fundamental to the larger gay rights move He asked himself, if queer people aren't allowed in the workplace, how can we be
seen as human beings, as full members of society. He felt encouraged by Bill Clinton running for president in nineteen ninety two. During his campaign, Clinton promised to lift the ban, so Danny came out to the military. He thought he'd be protected, but after Clinton got elected, he took back that promise. Generals and congress members began pushing back on him. So Clinton came up with a compromise that would become
known as Don't Ask, don't Tell. Gay service members could serve so long as they didn't tell anyone they were gay. So when Danny came out in nineteen ninety two, he became one of the first service members to be discharged under this new policy.
I came out in I believe it was nineteen ninety one one or ninety two. Bill Clinton was running for president. He said that if he was elected, he would lift the ban, and being the naive person that I still am, I believed he would do that, and I wanted people to know that we were already there, so they wouldn't be saying, Okay, you lift the band, you're gonna let
all these people in. I wanted them to know that I was already there, that I was one of the best of the best, and it would not change when the band was lifted, And so I decided to come out.
Now.
When I came out, my fellow soldiers were very angry with me, only because I didn't tell them before. So why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you tell us? And I said I couldn't. I could not tell you about this. So with the don't ask, don't tell compromise, I had told. So I was discharged.
When you were deciding to come out. Did any of that have to do with Darryl?
Of course it did a lot of it had to do with AIDS because we had reached a point, and it is the truth. They will let you die. They will let you die. Until you speak out, until you work to get people elected to let them know your political power, they will let you die. And so that fueled my own desire to change that policy.
Break that down for me, How was the military band against people connected to the fight against AIDS?
Because we saw what was happening with AIDS, that if you don't speak up for yourself, if you don't come out, if you're not visible, if you're not authentic, if you don't reach out and change the country, we will die and they will kill us, and they will prevent us from having the same rights as everyone else. We knew that the military ban it had to go before we could have anything else. We would not have marriage, we
would not have protections until that ban was gone. And so with all that was going on with the AIDS epidemic, it was time to act. It was time to use our voice to say to our fellow Americans, you will not let us die. We have power and we have influence, and it's time to bring justice to this country for LGBT people, in our healthcare, our right to marry, in our right to serve. It was the time to speak out,
and Daryl encouraged me very strongly to do it. He also loved me in uniform, but he said go for it. And so he died on December twenty six, nineteen ninety three, and I was discharged in March of nineteen ninety four, a very difficult time. I remember the day I hung my uniform up and put it away in the closet. And all of my medals, my ribbons, my training, my being an exceptional soldier, all of that it did not matter. And that is the way of injustice in this country.
You can be the best, and if you're different, it does not matter.
When Danny got discharged in nineteen ninety four, he became active in fighting against Donas Dontel. After losing many of his friends and the love of his life to AIDS, he realized that the government was never going to help gay people unless they stood up and spoke out. He became president of the American Veterans for Equal Rights organization, and he would speak at rallies, meet with voters, and even advised the Pentagon on how a potential repeal would work.
And after sixteen years of fighting to end that ban, on December twenty second, twenty ten, Danny watched as President Obama signed the repeal of Donas Dontel into AWE. He was even in the room. The ban against homosexuality in the US military that began centuries ago was over. So one of my last questions, Danny, is just about the signing of the repeal. What was it like to be in the room with the president as this bill was being signed that ruined so many lives, even your own.
What was it like for it to then be at the swipe of a pen gone?
It was totally joyful that finally, finally justice had won. It was saying, you know, it's done, and that's those were the president's words when he signed it. He said this is done. And we started chanting yes we did. You remember the Obamas was yes we can, Yes we can, and we started chanting yes, yes we did, Yes we did. It was tremendous joy. And as far as the military went, the defenders of freedom were the representatives of freedom, and
that was a very, very powerful feeling. I was in a pride parade recently here in San Antonio and there were young people, gay people there in the pride parade representing the Air Force, and I was talking to them and I mentioned, donats, don't tell, and one of them said to.
Me, what was that?
And in some ways that's victory? And I'll tell I'll look at them, every one of them, saying you are my victory. You are my victory because you don't have to worry about that, and you can serve proudly. So in a way, having them totally ignorant of something like that is said, well, that's that's where we are today because of the sacrifices that were made, and there were big sacrifices. Careers, lives were lost.
Was Darryl on your mind that day of the signing.
Yeah, Darryl's portrait still hangs on our wall here in this house. He was there with me every event that I went to. That's how I kept him alive. To me, Yeah, He'll always be on my mind, He'll always be in my heart.
It sounds like that was a force that was sort of motivating you throughout all of this activism.
I say that, you know, I've seen a lot of courage, and he embodied that for me. So at moments when when I was feeling down, his courage was there for me. When I went before my board and my discharged board, his courage was there for me, and it remains with me still. I am a veteran. I served at the military, but AIDS was my battle and I never saw so much courage in my life as our brothers when they faced the enemy within a disease that they couldn't beat.
And I never have to doubt that they were the most courageous people I've ever met, and their inspiration and their memory stays with me still today.
Well, Danny, that's sort of what the show is about. So it's about the title is called but We Loved. Yeah, So what that means is, you know, despite all of these really horrible moments in American history that gay people have faced, they're all these wonderful pockets of courage and perseverance and love.
Yes, and when with someone that you love with all your heart suffers, you don't have to ask yourself if you're going to be able to get through this. You know the answer to that. And even though we lost that battle, our love certain it was never gone. It survived and always will.
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in to tell your story, email us at Buttweloved at gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a production of the Outspoken podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are shehino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our. Executive producers
are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Normal. Fact checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.