The Long Gay Line: Gender and Sexual Orientation at The Citadel

Graduates of academies like The Citadel and West Point join a "long gray line" of distinguished alumni who have gone on to guide the American military during times of war and govern the country during times of peace. As with any other institution, it should come as little surprise that some of these alumni were and are gay. Cadets taking the flag down at a retreat military dress parade, courtesy of The Citadel.

Joe Johnson was born in Palatka, Florida, and grew up fourteen miles outside of town. His father was a logger, and his mother worked various jobs, including school bus driver and cafeteria worker. Johnson was a well-rounded kid: he loved art, excelled in academics, and played on the offensive line of his high school football team. Coming from a working-class family, college was only an option if admission came with a generous scholarship. The Citadel's acceptance letter did, and Johnson decided to go. His parents couldn't have been prouder.

Hell Week is always hot and humid, and the summer of 1983 was no exception. The weather is just part of the trial by fire that includes racking (yelling), marching, push-ups, shirt-tucks, and haircuts. For Johnson, however, Hell Week wasn't all that hellish. He had already gone through boot camp after joining the National Guard a year earlier, and he was in pretty good physical shape because of football. More importantly, Johnson knew that Hell Week was as much about mental discipline as physical strength. Still, as the Military College of South Carolina, The Citadel prided itself on being tougher than the toughest boot camp, more difficult even than the national service academies. After all, the service academies had been admitting women since the mid-1970s. In the 1980s The Citadel's mission was to fashion whole men, men who would become leaders in the military and in civil society. Most of these men were southern. A few, like Joe Johnson, were gay.

Like other American military academies, The Citadel is an institution steeped in tradition. The graduates of academies like The Citadel and West Point join a "long gray line" of distinguished alumni who have gone on to guide the American military during times of war and govern the country during times of peace. It should come as little surprise that some of these alumni were and are gay. It may be a bit more surprising that gay cadets and alumni believed in and defended the tradition of all-male military schools with the same tenacity, and employing many of the same arguments, as their straight comrades: The Citadel built character, deepened a sense of honor, and strengthened the bonds of brotherhood among men. Just as important, for some cadets (gay and straight), The Citadel offered unassailable proof of manhood in a society that might otherwise doubt or deny it.

Exploring the contentious history of The Citadel during the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s reveals much about the roles of gender and sexuality often hidden in plain sight in the South. Even though there has been excellent work on the struggle over gender integration at The Citadel, the role of homosexuality at the institution and the relationship between gender and sexuality remain largely unexplored. When we finally look at these once taboo topics, we find, not surprisingly, that The Citadel was (and is) populated by a varied cast of characters, individuals who shatter stereotypes about singular identities of womanhood, manhood, southernness, and homosexuality. A range of men, some gay, attended The Citadel and fought to keep it all-male. Losing that battle, these men found that the newly integrated institution evolved both in ways that they had feared and in others they could not have foreseen.¹

Citadel History

Today, The Citadel guards the marshy bank of the Ashley River, one of two rivers that together separate the peninsula of Charleston from the mainland. But when the garrison was first established in the early 1820s, it was more centrally located, just...