By the time he was 22, James Belangia had served honorably in the U.S. Army as a military police officer in Germany and with the South Carolina National Guard in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
But it wasn’t until he enrolled at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps that Belangia said he accepted that he was gay.
Belangia’s public acknowledgment of his homosexuality in a letter on March 18 to his commanding officer and to University of South Carolina President John Palms could become the nation’s test case of how Army ROTC officials will handle such cases in light of President Clinton’s plans to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military.
“I’ve come to terms with who I am,” said Belangia, 23, a sophomore majoring in criminal justice. “It’s not something I’ve tried to hide.”
But whether Belangia will be allowed to continue participating in the ROTC program remains unresolved.
Like the military, Army ROTC prohibits homosexuals from serving, even though recruits are no longer required to state their sexual orientation upon joining, said Capt. Thomas N. Cummings, a spokesman for the Army ROTC Cadet Command at Fort Monroe, near Hampton, Va.
But local commanders are required to suspend cadets who declare they are homosexual and begin proceedings to “disenroll” them, Cummings said. Suspended cadets lose their tuition scholarship and $100 per month in expense money. In some cases, dismissed cadets must repay the cost of their training, he said.
The decision whether to dismiss a declared homosexual is made by national Army ROTC commander Maj. General Wallace C. Arnold, Cummings said. However, the U.S. attorney general may suspend such dismissals in the wake of President Clinton’s temporary compromise on allowing gays in the military.
Belangia said he decided to announce his sexual orientation because he feared Lt. Col. Walter Carpenter, the Army ROTC commander at the university, was planning to monitor his activities, hoping to find a reason other than homosexuality to dismiss him.
Though Carpenter told Belangia he knew of his homosexuality, Carpenter was apparently fearful of publicity the program would attract by dismissing a gay cadet, Belangia said.
Belangia joined the Army in 1986 and served three years as a military policeman in Berlin. He received an honorable discharge in 1990 and returned to South Carolina where he joined the National Guard just days before Iraq invaded Kuwait. He served more than seven months in Saudi Arabia and Iraq with the Army’s 132nd Military Police Company as part of Operation Desert Storm.
After he enrolled at USC and in the ROTC, Belangia said an anonymous letter was sent to Carpenter charging Belangia was gay.
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Belangia said the situation worsened after he wrote a letter to a campus newspaper in favor of allowing gays into the military. He said he was harassed by ROTC commanders, phone calls and threats from fellow cadets.
Superior officers did nothing, he said.
“If that had been racial harassment or the harassment of a woman the Army would have jumped on that with both feet, they would have put a stop to it right away,” he said. “But to let it go on against me just because I’m gay is absolutely wrong.”
USC spokeswoman Debra Allen said Belangia’s status will not affect his standing as a student and school officials are investigating Belangia’s charge of harassment.