When I told my mother in 2003 that I was going to apply to join the NYPD, she had three reactions: relief, shock, and fear.
Relief because my father had recently died, I had zero job prospects of any kind (my film degree was meaningless, I had been rejected from teaching fellowships, and 5,000 cold resumes I had sent out were met almost entirely with silence), and at least someone was showing interest in hiring me.
Shock because I was living with her in California and she thought this was an extreme way to get my gay ass back to New York, a city she said I had said I had wanted to live in since I was a small child (because, she was too polite to say, she knew I was gay).
And fear that I would be ineligible to be a cop because my ass was gay (which she did say).
It was 2003, and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) had been the law of the land for a decade. It meant that personnel could only serve in the US military if they were closeted (though in reality, many people were discharged dishonorably while being outed by others). Since World War II, approximately 100,000 service members were ejected from the military for being gay, with more than 13,000 of them kicked out under DADT since Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.
