REACHING THE HEARTLAND

LEF News and Views

The Forum
Fargo, ND newspaper

Once in the closet, gay police officer combats stereotypes

By Mila Koumpilova, The Forum

Published Monday, June 13, 2005

Sgt. Greg Lemke was about to get into his car at the Fargo law enforcement training center's parking lot last summer when a police academy trainee dashed after him.

"I feel terrible," the young man said. "All through high school, I picked on a kid."

The kid, the trainee assumed, was gay, and calling him on it in crowded school corridors had become the young man's shortcut to teen cool.

Lemke flashed back to his own teenage years. In ninth grade, he snuck out the back door of a Moorhead public school after classes because he knew his own four-person bully squad, the boys who slammed him into lockers and screamed "faggot," lingered in front.

Call him up and just say you're sorry, he told the young man.

Lemke had just wrapped up teaching his sexual orientation diversity training, a two-hour workshop that for three years has compelled police academy trainees like the man in the parking lot to confront their assumptions and discomfort about homosexuality. The goal: preparing officers-to-be to treat gay victims and fellow officers with better understanding.

In the years before launching the training, Lemke, 44, overhauled his take on his own sexuality. He transformed from a man who went to great lengths to stay in the closet well into his 30s to one of the most visible advocates for gay rights in the Fargo area. As a member of the Moorhead City Council, he is the only openly gay elected official in the area.Lemke's sexual orientation, once a meticulously kept secret, is a subject he now discusses openly, and for a reason. All too often, in area residents' reticence about homosexuality, he distinctly hears: "That's OK if you're gay, but don't tell me about it. Don't talk to me about it."

That's his definition of sham tolerance.

A cop in hiding

During the training he conducts, Lemke and fellow officer Paula Ternes try to dismantle stereotypes (not all gay men are hairdressers, not all lesbians drive truck), dispense tips on how to serve gay victims petrified of being outed on the police blotter and share guidelines on how to tell roommate squabbles from same-sex domestic violence.

But before they get down to business, Lemke reels off a succession of scenarios projected on a large screen.

• An officer who stayed in the closet on the job for a decade.

• A gay officer who got grief for sticking up for homosexuals after an investigator opined that all gay men with HIV should be labeled.

• A gay officer who stayed silent, shutting out the locker room banter about "queers" and "faggots."

After the final anecdote pauses on the screen, Lemke holds up a paperback and says, "Those quotes are from this book, and those quotes are about me."

That's when things turn, says Ternes. After all, network TV sitcoms don't normally cast gay men as Combat Cross-bearing cops with 20 years of experience.

The book Lemke holds up, "A Matter of Justice: Lesbians and Gay Men in Law Enforcement," is a collection of first-person narratives that capture the tensions gay cops face in what the book's author describes as traditionally one of the most homophobic workplaces. When the bookcame out in 1996, stepping out of the closet was a scary prospect for Lemke.

So scared was he of being outed that he repeatedly looked the other way when he spotted a man he had detained several times for minor violations. He knew the man was driving without a license, but he also knew he had threatened to out Lemke if he ended up in court again.

Lemke was also scared because he had heard an officer refer to a victim with a homosexual slur and had seen an officer refuse to take a complaint by another man, his face bleeding, who was effeminate. "It was a conservative, macho, tough-guy environment," Lemke says.

Shortly before the book appeared, Lemke thought he was burned out on police work. He diagnosed his longing to quit as an upshot of the long hours, the thankless job. But in retrospect, he knows it was about having to tiptoe along a lonely trajectory through the chummy department world.

He was tired of skipping Christmas parties, softball tournaments and cookouts. He was tired of wondering, "What are they thinking? What do they know?"

At the time, Lemke kept his secret from his family, too. Mark Youngblood, 40, supervisor of a troubleshooting team at Fargo's Microsoft Great Plains and Lemke's partner of 17 years, moved here from the Twin Cities on a whim and without a job, and he cropped up at family gatherings under the guise of a permanent roommate. Lemke hoped his relatives didn't guess otherwise.

In 1994 and 1996, Lemke ran unsuccessfully for the North Dakota House, tapping into a passion for politics he nurtured since stuffing envelopes as a 12-year-old for extra school credit at the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.

He was terrified of being outed during the campaign, and when he applied for and received a contribution from the Washington, D.C.,-based Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, he listed them in campaign materials as "Victory Fund."

Then in March 1997, in the heat of public debate over states adopting the Defense of Marriage Act, Lemke came across an anonymous letter to the High Plains Reader from a gay man arguing in favor of staying in the closet. Lemke was angry at the letter writer and, because he had subscribed to some of the man's arguments for so long, he was angry at himself.

Lemke used his impassioned response, a diatribe against staying in the closet, as his pass to get out of it. He then handed a copy of that newspaper to a coworker he knew would spread the news and waited anxiously.

Confronting his fears

Lemke was the first Fargo officer to come out of the closet.

Both Lemke and Ternes heard from other officers about locker room announcements made in Lemke's absence: "I would not go around the block to back him up," the ultimate police putdown, and "I don't want to work with that faggot Lemke."

But such comments died down fast. Lemke had experience, an excellent track record and a reputation for being approachable and fair.

"Greg is viewed as very intelligent, creative and hard-working. His sexual orientation is invisible," says assistant chief Keith Ternes, Paula Ternes' husband.

Police Chief Chris Magnus gives Lemke credit for the department's positive image within the area gay community, a twist on a relationship that has been traditionally tense in other parts of the country.
As the calamity Lemke vaguely pictured failed to occur, he felt relief - and regret - that he squandered so much energy hiding his secret.

"What a waste of all these years," Lemke thought. And with regret came a sense of urgency, a desire to make up for lost time.

Months after he came out, Lemke found himself facing Fargo Mayor Bruce Furness and the City Commission. He challenged a Police Department policy that did not allow him to leave his pension to his partner.

That spring he had approached Kathy Rieckman, chief of the pension board, and explained he wished he could leave his pension to Youngblood, his partner of 10 years at the time. The board approved the proposed change from "spouse" to "domestic partner" and, in June 1998, Rieckman presented it to the commission.

Lemke spoke in favor of changing the policy that affected 40 single employees. Before Lemke's address, Fargo activist Martin Wishnatsky questioned the Police Department's "moral standards in the area of sexual behavior."

Lemke called all five commissioners, including - after some soul-searching - the ones he knew were too conservative to support the change. One chided him for making a mockery of marriage.

The commission shot down Lemke's proposal, urging the board to scrap the phrase "domestic partner" for the more neutral "designee." But that November the commission approved the revised proposal 3 to 2, and Lemke was elated. Standing up for himself and the gay community was a new experience.

Backing underdogs

In the years after he came out, Lemke tackled a number of gay rights fights. He has persisted for years in a one-man drive to secure domestic partner benefits for city of Fargo employees, sending letters to city human resources directors and lobbying commission members.

In 2003, on Lemke's initiative, the Moorhead City Council voted to include sexual orientation in the city's anti-bias policy.

But for years, his forte has been standing up for others. As a law enforcement student in the uniformed, regimented world of Alexandria (Minn.) Technical College, he'd call out fellow students who told black jokes or women jokes. But if they told gay jokes, he kept quiet.

As a DARE and school resource officer, Lemke received credit for the success of the program: He helped set up the statewide school anti-drug program and kicked off the winning DARE camps where students see officers without uniforms and the aura of stringent authority.

"Some guys are there to collect their paycheck and go home," says Mark Voigtschield, an officer who worked for Lemke for a year. "Greg's No. 1 concern is helping people."

But those who have seen Lemke in action, in the cafeteria and along school corridors, also applaud his knack for spotting the most vulnerable kids - the bullied and snubbed - and coming to their rescue.

In his campaigns for the Moorhead City Council, Lemke championed the underdogs of the community.

In his 2001 campaign, when he finished second only to be appointed months later when a member resigned, and in 2003, when he ran unopposed, he spoke about homelessness, racial profiling and the low graduation rate of Hispanic students, the highlights of an unflattering report on Moorhead by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

When he joined the council, Lemke became one of 12 openly gay elected officials in the Minnesota and one of 287 nationwide, a fivefold increase over the past 10 years, according to Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund stats. North Dakota is one of 10 "horizon" states, the Victory Fund designation for states with no openly gay officials.

Lemke made the speech he's most proud of in the buildup to a final vote on approving the move of the Churches United for the Homeless shelter to a new building on First Avenue North at the entrance to Moorhead.

A higher pitch fluttering his even tone, Lemke cautioned council members against sending the wrong message to homeless kids: "We want you to have a house somewhere, but not here, not the entrance to our city, because it might be embarrassing."

Advocates for the move had brought in a couple of the shelter residents, the major stakeholders in the vote but, intimidated by the stern, suit-wearing gathering, they slipped out quietly before their turn to speak. "That really hit home," Lemke says. "To some people, I am this type of person, just in a different context."
Lately, Lemke has been loath to slip out unnoticed.

"He's passionate about being a vehicle for change, being a voice for the people who don't have one," says partner Youngblood.

Out in the open

Soon after Lemke and Lauri Winterfeldt-Shanks joined the Moorhead City Council in 2002, they car-pooled to a conference for newly elected officials in the Twin Cities.

They had both heard rumors. Winterfeldt-Shanks had heard Lemke was gay. Lemke had heard she was a conservative Christian who would likely not think highly of him.

As a result, the drive started out a little tense until Lemke tackled the rumors head-on. They talked about his family and about her reading of the New Testament, and by the time they reached Barnesville 25 miles later, they had exorcised the hearsay out of their budding friendship. Lemke later invited her to the housewarming party for his Moorhead home.

He had learned that cutting down on speculation time is worth it. After an ultimatum by his partner, he came out to his family before coming out at work. When his mother said she had long ago figured it out, he was relieved, but also wanted to shout: "Why didn't you say so? Twenty years ago, why didn't you ask me?"

Some of the anxious guesswork is still hard to weed out. Are some officers not looking him in the eye and cutting conversations short because they're uncomfortable with him - or is it just because of his position as a superior?

Lemke and Youngblood still skip most after-work functions. What if someone has too much to drink and makes a scene? What if someone leans out of a car and shouts "faggots" as he and Youngblood walk their four collies?

"It's just that constant fear of what might happen, fear of the unknown," Lemke says.

That fear makes his stomach churn every time he prepares to face the trainees in his diversity class. But when he steps in front of the students, he's calm, confident and so matter-of-fact that students conclude he took the episodes he shares in stride.

Lemke has purposely ignored that churning sensation in recent years.

He has been a prolific writer of letters to the editor and even won a Golden Pen Award given by The Forum's Reader's Board for a 2002 piece on the YMCA policy of refusing family memberships to same-sex couples with children, a policy that was later changed.

He spoke at Gay Pride parades and addressed student participants in a November walkout against the gay marriage amendment.

He insisted Youngblood's name appear in his bio on the city of Moorhead Web page. These days on his Police Department desk, among cubicles adorned with kids' drawings and pictures of smiling wives, there's a portrait of Lemke and Youngblood, both wearing shades on a sun-drenched day.

Lemke also never turns down invitations to speak about his experience as a gay man. This April, he faced a hushed group of master's students in school and community counseling at North Dakota State University.

He told them about his first and last encounter with a counselor his senior year of high school. The counselor whipped out a Bible and assured him he could be "fixed." Lemke sat through the 45-minute session, then walked out of the office and deeper into the closet.

Lemke told the students a don't-ask-don't-tell existence wasn't for him.

"You move to a different place, you go back into the closet, or you keep fighting," he said. "I guess I'll keep fighting for a little while longer."

Readers can reach Forum reporter Mila Koumpilova at (701) 241-5529.

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