Las Vegas --
Chief Warrant Officer Charlie Morgan kept it simple and sweet. She was eight months into a nine-month assignment in Kuwait, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had just informed Congress that the U.S. armed forces were ready to integrate openly gay troops.
Morgan decided the time was right to come out to her commander. The photograph of her wife and 4-year-old daughter she kept hidden on her desk helped her do it.
"I said, 'Sir, I would like to introduce you to someone. This is my family,' " Morgan recalled of her July conversation with her boss, an Army colonel leading a 2,400-solider brigade. "He said, 'Charlie, you have a beautiful family. You know, "don't ask, don't tell" prevented me from getting to know you.' "
Almost four weeks after the United States lifted its ban on service by open gays and lesbians, similar stories of secret-shedding, relief and acceptance were swapped Saturday at the first national convention of gay military personnel on active duty.
Each of the 200 or so sailors, soldiers and Marines attending the conference put on by the formerly clandestine group known as OutServe had, to varying degrees, only recently revealed their sexual orientations at work. None had gotten a reaction worse than a shrug.
"Out of the 4,500 members we have, we haven't had any person come to us about one single problem, which is huge," said Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried, the group's co-founder. "Everything has been 100 percent positive."
During a panel discussion called "Being Out While Being In," Michelle Benecke, a former Army battery commander who left the military before "don't ask, don't tell" was enacted, called gay Americans serving their country with pride "the right wing's biggest fear."
"Because of what you do, you destroy the stereotype about gay people every day, that we are selfish and we are only out for our own gratification. No one can look at you and say that's true," Benecke said.
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