Serving All Who Served: An Analysis of the VA's Visual and Digital Rhetorics for Welcoming Sexual and Gender Minority Veterans Into VA Care

• Date: 01 December 2019
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Author: E. Ashley Hall,Jennifer Ware,Christina Puntasecca
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.321

440

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.321

© 2019 Policy Studies Organization

Serving All Who Served: An Analysis of the VA’s Visual

and Digital Rhetorics for Welcoming Sexual and Gender

Minority Veterans Into VA Care

Christina Puntasecca , E. Ashley Hall , and Jennifer Ware

Nearly one million veterans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)and could be

eligible for services provided by the United States Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). Historical

criminalization of service members prior to and during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy created social

and cultural barriers to LGBT veterans seeking VA care. To date, no studies have assessed the

implementation of the VA’s efforts to create a welcoming environment for LGBT veterans. This study

fills that gap by using rhetorical genre studies to analyze how official VA.gov websites position and

address LGBT veterans. Our results indicate that rhetorical and discursive strategies deployed on the

VAMC web sites betray information asymmetries reflecting varying levels of ambition and com-

mitment to inclusion of LGBT veterans. With a focus on techne, we conclude with research‐based

recommendations for VA practitioners, administrators, and policymakers to improve patient‐provider

communication through public digital rhetorics.

KEY WORDS: LGBT, veteran, genre theory

Introduction

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)estimates that there are as many as

one million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)veterans in the United

States who are currently eligible for health care through the VA (VA San Francisco

Healthcare System, 2018). LGBT people have served their country with honor and

dignity since the earliest days of our nation’s founding, but the military has not

historically been a welcoming environment for LGBT service members

1

. Indeed, the

U.S. military has officially excluded LGBT people since the beginning; Lieutenant

Gotthold Frederick Enslin was dismissed on March 11, 1778, for homosexuality. In

the early decades of the twentieth century, men could be declared unfit for service

based on “feminine characteristics”or “sexual perversion.”Even in the midst of the

Second World War, “homosexual proclivities”were considered a disqualifying

condition for the selective service draft. According to the Department of Defense

(DoD, 1982)Directive 1332.14, which was originally issued on January 16, 1981, and

reissued with updates in 1993 and 2008, “homosexuality is incompatible with

military service”; the directive established mandatory discharge as the penalty for

service members who are found to have “engaged in, [have] attempted to engage

in, or [have] solicited another to engage in a homosexual act”(Key Dates in U.S.

Military LGBT Policy, 2018).

It was not until the 1993 institution of the controversial DoD (1993)policy

1304.26, commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”(DADT), that harassment or

investigation of closeted LGB service members was officially prohibited; those

limited protections did not extend to transgender service members, because the

policy covered only sexual orientation, not gender identity. While DADT relaxed

the previous strict prohibitions, it did not legalize homosexuality in the military or

allow LGBT service members to serve openly. Service members who exhibited or

engaged in behaviors that did not conform to heterosexual scripts or gender norms

remained vulnerable to investigation and subject to possible discharge (Bateman,

2004; Burrelli, 2011). They were also especially vulnerable to harassment, for

reporting harassment required that they out themselves, automatically violating

the DADT policy and opening themselves up to possible disciplinary action.

LGB service members can now openly serve in all branches of the U.S. military.

Transgender service members may serve, with certain limitations (Mattis, 2017),

but the question of whether they may serve openly is the subject of ongoing liti-

gation (Doe v. Trump, 2018; Stone v. Trump, 2017; Karnoski v. Trump, 2018;

Stockman v. Trump, 2018). This ongoing litigation challenges the August 2017

Presidential Memorandum, which reversed the 2015 memorandum from Secretary

of Defense Ash Carter that officially accepted transgender service members (Carter,

2016; Mattis, 2017).

After the recent official recognition of sexual minority service members, studies

have begun to examine the cultural, physical, and mental health experiences of

LGBT service members and veterans, including the mental health impacts of the

military’s long tradition of official exclusion and the resulting physical and verbal

harassment. For example, one study found that LB women in the military con-

sistently experience sexual assault and harassment at higher rates than their het-

erosexual counterparts (Lehavot & Simpson, 2014), and that these events were

correlated with higher than average rates of Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD)and depression. Another study indicated that lesbian service members felt a

persistent fear of disclosure and noted that even post‐DADT, many assimilated into

heteronormative military cultural expectations (Mount, Steelman, & Hertlein,

2015). Sexual minority veterans have higher rates of PTSD, anxiety, substance

abuse, suicide (Blosnich, Bossarte, & Silenzio, 2012; Blosnich, Foynes, & Shipherd,

2013; Cochran, Balsam, Flentje, Malte, & Simpson, 2013), sleep disorders, and

obesity (Blosnich et al., 2013)than their heterosexual counterparts.

DADT was repealed in 2011 (Obama, 2011). Throughout the policy changes

affecting active duty service members, the VA continued to provide services for all

LGBT veterans, including transgender veterans (Kauth et al., 2014), who still face

restrictions on their ability to serve on active duty (Mattis, 2018). In the wake of the

repeal of DADT, the VA released a five‐year strategic plan (Diversity and Inclusion

Strategic Plan: FY 2012–2016)that acknowledged sexual minorities for the first time.

In section one (“Provide Veterans Personalized, Proactive, Patient‐Driven Health

Care”), subsection E (“Quality and Equity”)of the VHA Goals and Objectives

Puntasecca et al.: Serving All Who Served 441