If you were dating a gay soldier, you wouldn’t be the first to hear if they’d been hurt or killed in the line of duty. You wouldn’t sign with your full name when you sent a letter. And you wouldn’t say ‘I love you’ on the phone.  For the partners of gay soldiers in the Iraq war, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (D.A.D.T) means much more than what goes on in the military.

Last night I saw a screening of Silent Partners, one episode of a ten-part series entitled In Their Boots. The series focuses on the impact the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have on people here at home. Silent Partners depicts the secrecy, shame, and isolation that comes from being gay with a partner in the army. It’s a painfully honest look at the suffering that gay partners endure. Faces blurred out with a censor, the interviewees explain the pain of stifling their feelings and the fear of being found out.

Lt. Dan Choi, recent poster child for the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal movement and the subject of my post on D.A.D.T. last week, presented the film, opening with a poem in Arabic. The poem, he translated, said that to simply exist is to be free; but to be in love is to be a slave.

It was that feeling of amorous slavery that led him out of the military and into the vanguard of the gay rights movement. Choi was 28 years old before he had what he calls his “first love relationship.”  That was enough for him. Learning what people mean when they say, “head over heels,” is what he says made him certain he couldn’t keep the truth from the world any longer.

Other panelists at the screening included Julianne Sohn, discharged from the Marines in 2007 and currently an LAPD spokeswoman; Jacob Diliberto, a veteran of the Marine Corps and straight ally; and Brian Baker, Dean of Sacramento’s Trinity Cathedral, military veteran, and straight ally.

Silent Partners is available for viewing online here.