Beautifully expressed letter. She describes the spiritual desert of the closet. What a loss to the armed forces.  

Good for her!I am glad she will be able to live her life more openly.
I am not a fan of the military but if people want to serve in it, they should be able to do so without being kicked out over something as silly as their sexual orientation.

Good for her. So good they will cotinue supporting her education.So very sad she cannot finish with her class. She states it just as it is DADT is and has always been very HARMFUL to the cohesion of OUR military.You only have to look at other countries integrated militaries to see that. Let's rid the military of homophobes and let all join who wish to, and become again a fine military power.  Until then we are seen as weak and mean spiritedand as a laughinstock when we say we stand for 'FREEDOM for ALL'. 

Stating the obvious.DADT is so ridiculous.  My congressman supports full repeal (he’s part of the LGBT Congressional Caucus).  All others should be getting a daily email, it can be short, demanding full repeal (not OT studies) now.

What dignity, and what a loss to our militaryThis young woman handled this situation with such admirable grace, especially given what an agonizing decision this must have been.
I don’t know how our opponents can’t look at someone like her and see how much we need people like her in our armed services.
I hope she’s back in the service before she even has a chance to get used to sleeping in in the morning.  

I suppose we ought to take confortin the clear fact that West Point’s leadership training keeps turning out genuine leaders, like Miller and Choi.  (Somehow, though, I’ll bet the Pentagon wishes it wasn’t quite so effective, nicht war?)  It’s just a pity that the Pentagon’s own swinish policy prevents them from serving their country as they’d like to.

We need more of herWe need more military officers like her and fewer who allow their bigotry to compromise their obedience to the chain of command and their professional and military ethics.

I’m glad she did the right thing…She found that she could not abide by the rules, so she resigned.
THAT is the ideal course of action. Not showboating for the cameras and breaking rules left and right.
The military is a volunteer organization and everyone knows the policies when they enlist. Someone who is fundamentally unable to abide by those clearly stated regulations should either resign or better yet, not sign up in the first place.
No one is putting a gun to these people’s head and forcing them to join the military. Anyone who is ubable to keep their private life PRIVATE should simply not be in the military.

Yeah.Those nasty straight folk talking about girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives.  Having photos of their beloveds with them, showing them to their comrades-in-arms.  And pictures of their children, too.  So reprehensible – why can’t they just stay quiet about their private lives?

Obviously you’ve not been an officerYour private life, partner, dinners, etc are all intertwined in the archaic social structure of the military.

RETRACT HER PHONE NUMBERA powerful letter, but for goodness sake cover up her phone number — the last thing this smart, brave young woman needs is to be harassed by every nitwit who disagrees with her.

Some of those clearly stated regulations..

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Any soldier who would have refused orders from her due to her being lesbian is liable to courts martial…any soldier who deserts their post in wartime due to homophobia is liable for penalties up to and including execution.
These are the dishonorable soldiers.  The Generals who advocate that the military…the defensive arm of our nation, expel talented officers and soldiers simply because they themselves are too chickenshit about their own masculinity to abide someone else’s sexuality…they dishonor our military by weakening it deliberately.
Our cadet may have abided lawfully by DADT until it broke her.  There is no dishonor in that alone.  There is great honor in standing up for your principles.  Always!

Are you for real?DADT is an open policy of discrimination against a harmless minority.  It is motivated by hate and is completely without foundation.  The rationale behind it is basically this: our soldiers are a bunch of bigots, but we need them to fight for our nation, so we need to humor them by keeping hidden or keeping out the people they are bigoted against.  Prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry are the ugliest chapters of our nation’s history, chapters which are not yet completed in their writing.  The basic premise of DADT is that our fighting men and women represent the very worst of America.  It is one of the last examples of outright discrimination being instituted in law (existing marriage laws are actually not as explicitly discriminatory as DADT, and discriminate through omission, where DADT is a sin of comission).  DADT is demeaning to everyone involved in the military and the nation as a whole.  To the gay and lesbian soldier, it says that they are unfit to serve.  To the strait soldier, it says that they are intolerant, ignorant bigots.  To the LGBT community, it says that your government, deep down inside, just wants you to either be invisible or go away.  To the nation it says that we haven’t learned the lessons of the civil rights fights that have gone on before us.  To the world it says that the US is still a backward, narrow minded place unfit to lead the world into the 21st Century.  Everyone loses with DADT.
You think people should just quietly quit if they can’t live under DADT?  You think that leaving someplace where you are not wanted will really teach them a lesson?  You think that giving people what they want will cause them to pause and reconsider their actions?  Yeah, that should really bring about change.  DADT will never go away as long a people quietly give in to it.  Quietly giving in to it is un-American.  Standing up and fighting it is patriotic.

This is a Highly Evolved Human Being Who is Clearly Self-AwareCadet Sergeant Katherine Miller has illucidated the crux of problem one faces if locked in the military closet:  the inability to grow as a fully, authentic human being.  I am so taken by her following comments:
While at the academy, I have made a deliberate effort to develop myself academically, physically, and militarily, but in terms of holistic personal growth I have reached a plateau. I am unwilling to suppress an entire portion of my identity any longer because it has taken a significant personal, mental, and social toll on me and detrimentally affected my professional development. I have experienced a relentless cognitive dissonance by attempting to adhere to §654 [colloquially known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"] and retain my integrity, and I am retrospectively convinced that I am unable to live up to the Army Values as long as the policy remains in place.

I deeply relate to her inability to grow holistically.  I paid a high price for my Army career, although not followed through to 20 years and retirement. I came out later in my life; I did not have truly successful intimate relationships until much later in my life.  Hiding, adversely affected my ability to intellectually grow too.  I did not complete an advanced degree until later in life.  The cognitive dissonance is very hard to grapple with on a daily basis and demands tremendous psychic energy to keep both oars in the water to stay afloat. So I support her resignation and admire her forthright truth telling.  Cadet Sgt. Katherine Miller’s actions are honor bound.  I think the Army, nor the country deserves a young officer like this, until we as a people can tolerate the truth and respect those who are gay who also are serving in our armed forces.  Shame on all of us for this tremendous loss.

“Don’t Tell” should apply to ALL servicemembersIf a member of the armed forces talks about his or her heterosexual exploits, then they should be kicked out with an “other than honorable” discharge. That’s fair, right?
Oh, but that’s right: you don’t give a rat’s tail about equal rights, only special rights for heterosexuals only.

rape tolerance in the militaryMilitary law firmly indicates that rape of a fellow service member is a crime, but common military practice has been widely reported as penalizing or merely ignoring women who report rape. If your CO thinks that you are ugly, lying, hysterical, too ambitious, too ready to speak, lesbian, or other insufficiently feminine and gender-subordinate (as opposed to rank-subordinate), bringing up a charge of rape or assault is likely to result in anything from ignoring the charge, gossiping about it, to writing career-killing evaluations or transferring to dead-end posts.
There are a great many fair and honorable enlisted and officers out there, but there are still a significant number of senior officers who think that women don’t belong in the career military except as nurses and clerks.
Any woman who is not married and not known to be seriously involved with a fellow service member is a target for the minority of bullies who go beyond the polite request stage and who use the threat of spreading “lesbian” rumors to demand sex.

Actually…I have a problem with people VOLUNTARILY agreeing to abide by regulations only to turn around a grip and complain because they cannot live with them.
I applaud her for recognizing that she could not, and doing the right thing and leaving. Its as simple as that.

Shout out to the Point FoundationGood for the Point Foundation for supporting her further studies.  A truly worthwhile LGBT nonprofit…

SadThis is just more evidence that DADT needs to be repealed. I’m happy for her and her ability to come out and live as an openly gay woman. I think she knows she will be a much happier person now.

Most forms of employment are voluntary……but I somehow don’t think we’d accept the same logic from them.  And if anything, the military, as a public institution, should get less leeway in establishing supremacist policies for certain segments of the population.

Geek, you ineffably pathetic oxygen sucker….
Just when one thinks he has seen you go as low as humanely possible, you reveal another, lower geological layer of slime.
I know saying that, as well as “SHAME!”, falls on willfully deaf, self-loathing ears, but for all those gay servicemembers who have and do serve in silence, for all those whose lives have been ruined literally as well as figuratively over the decades of the ban, including those who have committed suicide as a result of being denounced by some brass asshat as a pervert not good enough to even die for his or her country, I must.

So, if you wanted to serve your country during a time of conflictand the military had a rule stating that people of your religion (call it X) could not serve,  you’d condemn any members of X from hiding their religious affiliation in order to serve?
I can understand any individual taking a stand on what he or she thinks is honorable.  However, I would not condemn another person for hiding a characteristic that makes them subject to discrimination of the worst sort.  Any more than I would have condemned Jews in Nazi Germany from pretending to be Christian, nor any person with an African-American heritage from “passing” in the deep South years ago.
SFG. you are free to hold yourself to whatever standard you wish.  You DON”T get to decide how other people should deal with laws/rules/behavior based on ignorant & soon-to-proven unConstitutional discrimination.

Nice try.As a West Point cadet, she signed up at 18, very likely shortly after her birthday, statistically.
I have no idea what your beliefs on the matter are, but the vast majority of people who don’t want gays in the military also say they believe that being gay is not inborn, and that sexual exploration is inappropriate in the underage.  (Whether they actually believe that is up for discussion.)
People need to pick one. Either being gay is so inborn, so obvious, and so integral to someone’s identity that signing up for the military at 18 is obviously committing fraud, knowing enough about their own sexuality to be clear that they won’t be able to follow the rules, or not, in which case by their own standards, they have to allow some room for people to develop and “choose” a sense of who they are.
If it is inborn and clearly apparent, then most of the justifications for the discrimination evaporate. If not, then cut the young woman a break. And get over it. Religion IS chosen, and is not a valid basis for discrimination.
Personally, I’M offended by the implication that our soldiers and sailors are so squeamish and unprofessional that the mere presence of someone they disapprove of is enough to distract them from their jobs.
As someone (gosh, who?) said, “Someone who is fundamentally unable to abide by those clearly stated regulations should either resign or better yet, not sign up in the first place.” If any straight soldier or sailor is unable to do their job because there’s a gay person nearby, THEY need to resign, or better yet, not sign up in the first place. Who needs cowards in the service?
As for the private life thing, as others have said, BULLSHIT. No straight person is required to keep their private life private. Not for an instant. In most cases, in fact, they aren’t allowed to, much less expected to. Security clearances involve listing family and loved ones, not to mention things like wives/spouses clubs and support groups, base housing, etc. And, as people have said, it is next to impossible to be a senior officer without a spouse.

BTW, SciFi GeekMost of the science fiction I’ve read has a theme (major or minor) that discrimination against those who are different only because they are different (usually alien species) is wrong & causes all kinds of problems.  The original Star Trek series & those that followed are excellent examples.
I was an R&D engineer at Hewlett Packard for many years.  Was a geek & worked with a lot of geeks.  Not surprisingly, most of them were able to apply logic to more than circuits & software.
Given your comments here, I find your username to be quite ironic.  However, I certainly uphold your right to use it.

Thank You, PamFor putting this out there.  Hopefully this policy will be overturned sooner rather than later so that people like Miller no longer have to lead double lives and we can get one step closer to recognizing the full humanity of everyone in the U.S.

It’s not that simpleNor should any government organization, military or otherwise, discriminate against any subset of people.  

Major Coverage of DADT tonighthttp://lezgetreal.com/2010/08/captain-jonathan-hopkins-west-point-grad-hero-fired-by-dadt/Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show tonight that people are still  getting fired over the Military “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy,” despite  President Obama’s promise to repeal it this term, and despite new  guidelines since March. If DADT is going to end why is President Obama failing to stop the  discharges, the inquiries, the resignations and the destruction of the  careers of heros and the finest? Appearing on her show tonight were Captain Johnathan Hopkins, whose  story is detailed below and Katie Miller.   Hopkins announced yesterday  that he was being investigated under DADT. Melanie Nathan lezgetreal