Stephen Snyder-Hill
Stephen Snyder-Hill is an American soldier, author, lecturer, and LGBT rights activist who served under the United States Army's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and fought against the Defense of Marriage Act in collaboration with Freedom to Marry and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. He is author of the book Soldier of Change which covers the media frenzy associated with his activism and his life as gay in the army.
Early life
Snyder-Hill grew up in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. One of the things he remembers about his childhood was the local newspaper running an April Fool's joke on April 1, 1994, about gay people and the KKK. The "joke" was that gay people and the KKK would march at a parade in the small conservative town. He writes in his book Soldier of Change: From the Closet to the Forefront of the Gay Rights Movement that as a child it bothered him, reinforcing the idea that it was wrong to be gay. Later in life, after all of the activism and publicity on September 27, 2014, the same newspaper honored him in an article about his activism. He uses this as an example of Trusting the Power of your voice and how it can change hearts and minds. In his book he details his coming out while at war. Describing the night of an artillery battle he writes:All of the sudden there was a huge explosion off to our left. That was the first time in my life I thought I might actually die. I happened to look up at a picture of my brother and his girlfriend. All those years of hiding who I was, being scared of it and not admitting or understanding it stopped right then. My whole life had been fake. And if I were to die, I would have never been honest with myself, never let myself love another person. I was so scared, and I felt like I was going to die alone.
He later discusses how a visit to Dachau when he lived in Germany also changed his life. He took photographs while visiting this holocaust site. One of the photos was a uniform with a pink triangle on it. He did not understand at the time what that meant, but later while in college he started wearing gay pride symbols and one of them was the pink triangle with the inscription "Silence = Death". He attributes that moment in his life to the moment when he was thrust into activism.
He then started speaking out while in college at The Ohio State University. A student had written a letter in the college newspaper The Lantern . The student thanked gay people for leaving Columbus to march on Washington, and said that for the first time in his life he did not have to worry about contracting AIDS. This infuriated Snyder-Hill who, for the first time, publicly wrote back a response. Snyder-Hill wrote: "I have recently come out, I am no different than you; well, you know, I might be a little different - I just got back from defending my country in Operation Desert Storm. When I say defending my country I mean defending everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation - that means everyone, including you. From this point on Snyder-Hill knew he had a calling to defend LGBT rights. He was out during college, but when he decided to re-join the US Army Reserve in March 2001, everything changed. He had to go back into the closet
Military service
Snyder-Hill served twenty-six years in the United States Army and Army Reserve in two stints, achieving the rank of major and earning the Meritorious Service Medal. He joined the army in 1988 at the age of 19, serving on active duty in Germany. He fought in the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait before his honorable discharge in 1996. He came out after leaving the army, but when he reenlisted in 2001 he had to go back into the closet and hide his sexuality in order to serve because of the Clinton-era Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. He was deployed to Iraq in support of in 2010. Throughout his military career Snyder-Hill received numerous awards and decorations.Snyder-Hill's military awards include: Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, Army Reserves Component Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Iraqi Campaign Medial, Global War on Terrorism Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Army Overseas Service Ribbon, Saudi Arabian For The Liberation of Kuwait Ribbon, and five Arcams. Steve officially retired from the US Military on November 22, 2019. The US Army gave him and his husband a certificate of appreciation .
Booing at debate
On September 22, 2011, at a Republican Party presidential debate in Orlando, Florida, before the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, debate moderator Megyn Kelly directed to presidential hopeful Rick Santorum a question via a YouTube video message posed by Snyder-Hill, who was then serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq. Snyder-Hill asked whether the candidates' presidencies would "circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military". In asking this question, Snyder-Hill publicly came out of the closet only two days after the official end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Before Santorum responded, some audience members booed Snyder-Hill and then the audience loudly applauded Santorum when he said he would reinstate the ban on openly gay people serving in the military. The responses precipitated partisan reaction often chastising the audience, as well as Santorum and the other candidates, for remaining silent after the booing and not supporting the soldier.Several candidates said after the debate that they regretted not speaking up or could not hear the boos from the stage. Vice President Joe Biden called the candidates' silence on the stage after the soldier was booed "reprehensible", and in a speech at the Human Rights Campaign, President Barack Obama, who would face one of the Republican candidates in the upcoming election, sharply criticized them for remaining silent, saying: "You want to be commander-in-chief? You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it's not politically convenient." A few months later, first Biden and then Obama endorsed marriage equality.
The booing incident at the debate was dramatized in the HBO television series The Newsroom.
LGBT rights activism
While a captain in the United States Army Reserve, Stephen Hill married Joshua Snyder in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 2011. Same-sex marriage was legal in Washington, but not yet across the United States. They were married in the Congressional Cemetery at the grave site of their personal hero Leonard Matlovich whose stone reads: "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." The couple petitioned to have their surnames combined to Snyder-Hill in the state of Ohio, which did not recognize their marriage at the time. The couple were advised to declare another, fictitious reason for the name change, but they refused. Interviewed on Current TV's The War Room, Hill said: "When the magistrate pulled us in there, she said that you can put any other reason on this application. … I'm not going to lie. That's one thing I have told myself since Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed. The Army accepts me. I'm not going to lie anymore to anybody else." They sought and were granted judicial relief from a court in Columbus, Ohio. He was also interviewed on the local news channel 10 TV where he was quoted as saying, "I won't lie anymore, I did it for 20 years of my life, I served my country so I shouldn't have to lie on an application."He and his husband were plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network challenging the Defense of Marriage Act and other federal statutes that prevented the military from providing equal protections and support to same-sex-marriage families,
and lent their story to a video produced by the advocacy group Freedom to Marry supporting marriage equality.
On Friday, June 21, 2013, Snyder-Hill and his husband Joshua arranged to have 25 LGBT couples married on the steps of the US Supreme Court right before the DOMA judgment. They were all married on the building's steps. During the ceremony, one of the guards came over and said to them that they were not allowed to protest, and he could not let them up on the grounds of the US Supreme Court as a group, but he said, "By God, nothing is preventing each couple from walking up there as a couple." So they did just that. As they were married they each walked down the steps of the US Supreme court as Snyder-Hill and Joshua read out their married names. The event attracted media and news coverage from their local Columbus News, to newspapers such as the Washington Blade.
Snyder-Hill's story was featured on the front page of the LA Times on December 29, 2013. Reporter Christopher Goffard captured their story with the tagline, "America saw Stephen Hill's face for 15 seconds. It took him a lifetime to show it."
Snyder-Hill's book, Soldier of Change: From the Closet to the Forefront of the Gay Rights Movement, with a foreword by George Takei, is described by its publisher as the first memoir by military personnel about serving under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
Snyder-Hill met with Columbus, Ohio Mayor Michael B. Coleman. He discussed his story with the Mayor, and shortly after that, the Mayor declared that he was joining the Mayors Freedom to Marry. Outlook magazine did a story on the event.
Snyder-Hill and his husband Joshua continue to travel as activists across the country telling their story. He uses the tagline "Trust the Power of your Voice" in speaking with universities and groups across the nation. He also did a TEDX Talk at Ohio State University in 2015 to a crowd of more than 4,000 people that ended in a standing ovation.