As a lesbian teen growing up in Houston, Sam Rodriguez longed to join the U.S. military. But its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which was instituted 1994 and drove gay soldiers into the closet, was not something Rodriguez could accept.
“I'd been out as a queer person since, like, freshman year, and I didn't want to subject myself to an institution that was going to force me back,” Rodriguez, now 38, tells Fortune.
