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UNE COM students (L-R) ENS Delanie Kneeland, COM '24, ENS Katie Santanello, COM '24, 2LT Melanie Kusakavich, COM '24, 2LT Lakin Dammer, COM '23 and 2LT Matthew Augusta, COM '24
My two years in Okinawa introduced me to many more diverse military members. My mentor connected me with an active duty physical therapist, who was stationed in Japan with her wife. She found me wandering the halls on my first day, still a little bit jet lagged and missing my spouse. She first introduced me to Outserve Okinawa ( which since then has merged with AMPA and become Modern Military Association of America (MMAA)), and the people that would become my Navy family while in Japan. During this time the initial transgender service ban repeal was beginning to be discussed and I had several service members come forward at OutServe meetings to discuss their experiences as transgender service members. As a physician, and one of the more senior out LGBTQ+ servicemembers on the island, I began to get involved with many discussions on medical care for the LGBTQ+ service members on island, including PrEP, fertility care and gender affirming hormone therapy. I became more vocal about my sexual orientation, and how it impacts my experience in the Navy.
As I returned stateside, my wife and I discussed growing our family. We were lucky to be stationed near the military Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility clinic at the Naval Medical Center San Diego. After about a year of treatments, we were fortunate to have a success story with them, and our rainbow baby, Kagan, was born almost 4 years ago at the hospital on Camp Pendleton. Through this process, I learned firsthand there are many diverse ways to make a rainbow family.
One memorable experience in 2018 involved the Honorable Ray Mabus, the 75th Secretary of the Navy, who was the keynote speaker at the AMPA gala fundraising event. He was discussing an encounter with a corpsman who served prior to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” being repealed. The service member served in fear of being discharged, due to being gay. During his 11 years, he served three combat deployments as a Fleet Marine Force (FMF) corpsman, going forward into the fight with his Marines. In telling the story of his meeting with this