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After formally receiving his discharge papers from the U.S. military, Lt. Dan Choi returned to The Rachel Maddow Show, where his journey began, to talk about how his life has changed and why he's still fighting to end "don't ask, don't tell."
"Being in the closet is a poison. It's a deadly toxic disease that people don't even realize how difficult that is until they're finally out. There are a lot of times when I look back at my time in service and told myself, "Why didn't I come out?" or "Why did I? I mean, I knew I was gay. I didn't want to come out to my parents. My dad is a minister. He's affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. He didn't want to know that his son, who went to West Point and went to Iraq, is an infantry man is also gay. He just wouldn't know how to deal with that. There are so many people who have "don't ask, don't tell" in their own hearts and in their own homes. And they deal with that same kind of enforced shame and that kind of enforced hatred of themselves. And it really tears away at the very fabric of who they are."
Choi came out on The Rachel Maddow Show in 2009. Since then, he has become the face of a movement to overturn the military's gay ban.
Watch the clip here.
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