He doesn't have to put up much of an act. Tonight the strapping 6-foot Filipino towers over the table, reaches out to greet late arrivals with arms like Sylvester Stallone. His deep, hearty laugh booms over the conversation. The soldiers are easy to pick out even without the buzz cut; their military bearing gives them away, the swagger as they approach the table.

Brett always pictured himself married by now. The Army encouragts officers to settle down early, and he never expected to get out of his 20s single. Most of the captains at Fort Carson are busy raising families, some are already onto their second marriage. Brett just turned 36, and he's never even been in love.

He looks around the table at his two best friends in Colorado, staff officers like himself, just a few years behind him. Drake is a big, brash Army captain, with a quick wit and a sharp tongue. Captain Alex is a quiet Marine, thoughtful and analytical, clearly the intellectual of the group. He carries himself like a Marine, agile and fit, but not tall or beefy like the other two. Yet for all their differences, Brett is single, Drake is single, Alex is single -- between the three of them, they can count exactly one serious boyfriend in their lives.

But then they haven't really been at it that much of their lives. Like most of the gay officers they know, they didn't come out to themselves until their late 20s, heavily invested in their military careers before they grasped their need to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Long before they dreamed of dating men, they dreamed of leading them into battle. The profession of arms. Over and over the phrase was drilled into their hearts at the academies, at Officer Candidate School and ROTC. They repeated it back with the reverence of a Trappist monk uttering his vow of silence. The earliest and noblest vocation, the same sacred calling that drew Alexander, Charlemagne and Caesar. Pope John Paul II traces his line back 2,000 years to St. Peter; Brett, Drake and Alex were taught to gaze back several thousand further, past the Hyksos, past Hammurabi.

It's difficult for civilians to grasp the gravity of a discharge to the true believer -- for any infraction, not just being gay. "It's an identity," Alex says. His attraction to men, that's just one characteristic among hundreds. "Being a Marine is a fucking lifestyle!"

Most of his life, the Profession meant everything to Brett. It's still the most important thing, but he wonders how wise it was to make it the only thing.

Now he wants a boyfriend. Eventually he'd like a husband, though all three captains are squeamish with the term, with the concept of gay marriage. They each want a "life partner." But Brett faced a bitter choice as he prepared to advance to major this spring. The pivotal career decision would pit his dream of a soul mate directly against the profession of arms.

It was never supposed to be a conflict. They were supposed to get married, the earlier the better. "The Army still has the concept of the command team," Drake says, and acquiring a first lady was more or less a job requirement -- advisable by captain, essential by lieutenant colonel.

"Don't ask, don't tell" made the news regularly during the four months I spent with the captains; but it was obvious almost immediately that they had little trouble maintaining the letter of the policy. Nobody was asking, and they certainly weren't telling. And as officers, they were largely immune to harassment.

The dirty little secret of the policy is that it never offered more than half a solution to the challenge of integrating gay men and women into the military. It attempts to accommodate enlisted gays -- but ignores the central problem faced by officers.

Before the change in 1993, the chief complaints in the gay enlisted ranks were discharge and harassment. In theory, the compromise was simple: You can be as gay as you please if you just keep your mouth shut; in return, we won't beat you up or kick you out. Fair enough if you can tolerate the closet (and if they ever figure out how to make that no-harassment promise a reality).

But the officer corps faced a different problem: not so much direct discharge, and especially not harassment, but an impenetrable glass ceiling. While presumed homosexuals are frequently tolerated in the lower ranks, even moderate suspicion will stop a rising officer's career dead in its tracks. And officers operate under an "up or out" system: For them, stagnation equals retirement. It amounts to a subtler form of delayed discharge -- after more than a dozen years invested in a hopeless career -- which the policy entirely ignores.

There is one well-known defense against the glass-ceiling ejection, but it requires a staggering sacrifice. While a national debate rages on over "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue," Brett, Drake and Alex quietly face an unwritten but parallel policy widely understood within their community: Don't ask, don't tell, don't fall in love.

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