In February 1994, the Clinton Administration offered a compromise: the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue policy, which allowed gay people to serve as long as they remained firmly in the closet. It was around that same time that Brett Jones’s parents found out he was gay and kicked him out of their home. With nowhere to go, Jones joined the Navy, having grown up fascinated by the mystique of the SEALs. He knew that being a gay military man wouldn’t be easy, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Jones excelled in the Navy, passing SEAL selection and becoming part of one of the most legendary fighting forces in the world. But he never told them about his orientation. During off-hours, Jones would sneak out to gay bars around Norfolk, Virginia, where he discovered another community for himself. “Those bars would just be populated with service members and ex-service members who’d been kicked out for being gay, and I heard horror story after horror story from these guys and girls, and it was really tragic,” Jones explains.
I mean, fuck, after a dishonorable discharge, some of them couldn’t work at McDonald’s.” “A lot of them had really promising careers in the military and because of their discharge status. Maybe, like, a quarter at most.īy that point, Jones had spent nine years in the Navy, most of that time as a SEAL. But when he reported to investigators in 2002, none of that mattered. They interrogated him about his sexual history and personal life. While he was under investigation, his security clearance was suspended and he was barred from SEAL facilities unless accompanied by an escort. “I went from being kinda this badass Navy SEAL to the guy that washes cars for Navy SEALs,” he says.Navy leadership didn’t show much sympathy for Jones, but many of his fellow SEALs did. “To my surprise, they were all very cool,” Jones recalls. “The guys would come over and talk to me when I was out cleaning cars.