‘Mission Possible: The Story of Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
By C. Dixon Osburn
c.2021, self-published $35 hardcover, paperback $25, Kindle $12.99 / 450 pages

When Senior Airman Brandi Grijalva was stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base, she talked with a chaplain’s assistant about some problems she had at home. The chaplain’s assistant said what she told him would be confidential. But when she revealed that she was a lesbian, the chaplain’s assistant no longer kept her conversation with him confidential. Grijalva, after being investigated was discharged.

Craig Haack was a corporal in the Marines serving in Okinawa, Japan. Haack, who had made it through boot camp, felt confident. Until investigators barged into his barracks. Looking for evidence “of homosexual conduct,” they ransacked everything from his computers to his platform shoes. Haack was too stunned to respond when asked if he was gay.

In 1996, Lt. Col. Steve Loomis’ house was burned down by an Army private. The Army discharged the private who torched Loomis’ house. You’d think the Army would have supported Loomis. But you’d be wrong. The army discharged Loomis for conduct unbecoming an officer because a fire marshal found a homemade sex tape in the ashes.

These are just a few of the enraging, poignant, at times absurd (platform shoes?), all-too-true stories told in “Mission Possible: The Story of Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by C. Dixon Osburn.

As a rule, I don’t review self-published books. But “Mission Possible” is the stunning exception that proves that rules, on occasion, are made to be broken.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was the official U.S. policy on gay, lesbian and bisexual people serving in the military. Former President Bill Clinton announced the policy on July 19, 1993. It took effect on Feb. 28, 1994.

Sexual orientation was covered by DADT. Gender identity was covered by separate Department of Defense regulations.

Congress voted to repeal DADT in December 2010 (the House on Dec. 15, 2010, and the Senate on Dec. 18, 2010). On Dec. 22, 2010, Former President Barack Obama signed the repeal into law. 

DADT banned gay, lesbian and bisexual people who were out from serving in the U.S. military. Under DADT, it was not permitted to ask if servicemembers were LGB. But, LGB servicemembers couldn’t be out. They couldn’t talk about their partners, carry photos of their girlfriends or boyfriends or list their same-sex partner as their emergency contract.

It took nearly a year for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to go into effect. On Sept. 20, 2011, Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “certified to Congress that implementing repeal of the policy {DADT} would have no effect on military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion or recruiting and retention,” Osburn writes.

Before DADT, out LGBT people weren’t permitted to serve in the military. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was intended to be a compromise—a policy that would be less onerous on LGB people, but that would pass muster with people who believed that gay servicemembers would destroy military readiness, morale and unit cohesion.

Like many in the queer community, I knew that DADT was a horror-show from the get-go. Over the 17 years that DADT was in effect, an estimated 14,000 LGB servicemembers were discharged because of their sexual orientation, according to the Veterans Administration.

But, I had no idea how horrific “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was until I read “Mission Possible.”              

In “Mission Possible,” Osburn, who with Michelle Benecke, co-founded the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), pulls off a nearly impossible hat trick.

In a clear, vivid, often spellbinding narrative, Osburn tells the complex history of the DADT-repeal effort as well as the stories of servicemembers who were pelted with gay slurs, assaulted and murdered under DADT.

Hats off to SLDN, now known as the Modern Military Association of America, for its heroic work to repeal DADT! (Other LGBTQ+ organizations worked on the repeal effort, but SLDN did the lion’s share of the work.)

You wouldn’t think a 450-pager about repealing a policy would keep you up all night reading. But, “Mission Possible” will keep you wide-awake. You won’t need the espresso.

‘The Charm Offensive: A Novel’
By Alison Cochrun
c.2021, Atria $17.00 / 368 pages

The applause is all for you this time.

It’s deafening, really — perhaps because there’s a standing ovation beneath it. All the work you did, the emoting, the emotions, you know how much your fans appreciate it. So take a bow. Drink in the love. As in the new novel, “The Charm Offensive” by Alison Cochrun, that’s one thing that’s sometimes missing in life.

Dev Deshpande was good at his job. He knew it, his colleagues knew it, it was fact. He might personally be terrible at love – case in point: he was still smarting from a three-months-ago break-up with his boyfriend, Ryan – but Dev was a pro at his job as producer for the reality TV show, “Ever After.” In fact, he’d been in charge of making dreams happen for six years’ worth of beautiful “Ever After” contestants; it helped that he believed in fairy tales.

Maybe one day, he’d find his own Prince Charming.

Just not this season.

This season, his lead director made him handle the “prince” instead of the usual “princesses,” and that was a challenge.

Charles Winshaw was 28, devastatingly handsome, extremely wealthy, and a nervous, introverted nerd who rarely dated. Geeky, awkward, and prone to panic attacks, he sincerely had no clue how to be romantic. Truth was, he was only there because his best friend and agent put him on “Ever After” to counter a reputation for being weird.

Still, Charlie was weird, and it was up to Dev to make him work for the show.

Shoring up Charlie’s confidence didn’t work, and neither did a pep talk. He couldn’t seem to just perform a role without freaking out and it was becoming obvious. By the time Dev’s assistant suggested having a few practice dates, Dev was willing to try anything.

He took Charlie to dinner. He spent time doing jigsaw puzzles with him, and he got Charlie to relax a little. If sparks flew, well, it was one-sided: Charlie was completely straight.

Wasn’t he?

You know what’s going to happen in the end, don’t you? Of course, you do. You’ll know it by page 30, step-by-step, with virtually no surprises, which leaves a long way to the final sentence of “The Charm Offensive.”

Now, it’s true that this novel is cute. It has its lightly humorous moments and author Alison Cochrun gives it a good cast, from contestant to show creator. It doesn’t lack details; in fact, reality dating show-watchers will feel right at home here. It even has the ubiquitous panoply of exotic locales for the “challenges” that the contestants must endure.

At issue is the length of this book. There’s too much of it, too many shirts that creep up, too many mentions of vomit, too much needless drama, too many will-he-won’t-he, when we know full well he will. This extra doesn’t ratchet up the tension, it makes things slow.

And so: cute story, familiar scenes, good characters in “The Charm Offensive.” But if taut is what you want in a rom-com, leave this book and bow out.

‘The Magician’
By Colm Toibin
c.2020, Scribner
$28/512 pages

If you told me that the most exciting book you’d read recently was a novel about the life of a writer, I’d think you were nuts. 

Especially if the author spent hours, daily, closeted in his study writing, was often remote from his children and, frequently, at least publicly, as stuffy as a pompous university professor. Yet, reading “The Magician,” a new novel by acclaimed gay writer Colm Toibin, has made me eat those words.

In “The Magician,” a fictional bio of the renowned 20^th century novelist Thomas Mann, Toibin has done what few have been able to do: He’s turned the life of a scribe into a page-turner.

In my youth, I carried “The Magic Mountain,” Mann’s voluminous 1924 novel, into cafes. I never made it all the way through the novel’s saga of Hans Castorp’s stay in a sanitarium for patients seeking treatment for tuberculosis. 

Though different in style, the novel was like James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” You wanted to be seen with it, even if you didn’t get it.  

Much of Mann’s work from his retelling of the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers to Dr. Faustus, his reshaping of the Faust legend in the life of a fictional composer, seems not only fraught with symbolism – but too long.

Yet, “Buddenbrooks,” Mann’s autobiographical novel about reversal of fortune of a German merchant family, published when Mann was just 26, is an engrossing read.

When Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, the Prize citation called “Buddenbrooks,” “one of the classic works of contemporary literature.”

“Death in Venice,” Mann’s 1912 novella has caused generations of queers to prick up their ears. Particularly, back in the day, when few of us were out in life or in fiction.

“Death in Venice” is the story of the writer Gustav Von Aschenbach who’s attracted to a beautiful boy named Tadzio. It’s not an out and proud tale. Aschenbach’s lust for the youth gets entangled with illness. Yet, homoeroticism permeates the novella.

Toibin’s take on Mann’s life is fictional. But, in writing “The Magician,” he spent years researching Mann’s journals and biographies of Mann.

On the surface, Mann who was born in Lubeck, Germany in 1875 and died in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1955, led a heteronormative, conventional life.

He and his wife Katia were happily married for decades. Katia, who was bright and charming, was one of the first women of her generation to study at a university. The couple had six children.

After writing in the morning, having lunch, taking a walk, eating dinner with his family – Mann would go to an opera or a concert.

If you’re queer, you know there’s often more than meets the eye. in “The Magician,” Toibin uses his fab writerly wiles to reveal what’s behind the curtain.

Like Aschenbach in “Death in Venice,” Mann, from his youth, was attracted to boys and men.

Though closeted in public, he wrote about his same-sex attractions in his diaries.

From the get-go, Thomas and Katia Mann appear to have reached a tacit understanding of Thomas’s sexuality.

When he first met Katia, Mann was attracted by her boyish qualities. Mann “imagined Katia naked, her white skin, her full lips, her small breasts, her strong legs,” Toibin writes.

Katia understood Mann’s sexuality. In some ways, it was helpful to her. It meant, Katia said, that she didn’t have to worry about Mann going after another woman.

On his part, Mann made a tacit commitment to Katia. “Thomas would do nothing to put their domestic happiness in jeopardy,” Toibin writes.

The Manns fled from Munich to Switzerland when the Nazis came to power. (Katia was Jewish.)

When they were in exile, Mann was terrified that the Nazis would find the revelations about his same-sex attractions in his diaries.

If the Nazis made his sexuality public, it would be known “who he was and what he dreams about,” Toibin writes. 

The Manns weather love affairs (some of his children were queer), suicides of family members and exile.

The book becomes as suspenseful as a Hitchcock thriller as they struggle to find a new home after the Nazis devastate their native country.

“The Magician” is brimming with entertaining soap opera, campy bons mots and riveting history.

Though it’s 500-plus pages, you won’t be able to put it down.