Editing Stephen Donaldson (activist) (section)

==Military experience (1970–1972)==
[[Image:Robert Martin medals.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Robert Martin's (Stephen Donaldson's) military portrait, medals, and insignia]]
Donaldson had a longstanding desire to join the [[United States Navy|Navy]], even buying a sailor's uniform during college, in which he cruised the city and pretended to be a serviceman on a visit to a naval base in [[Pensacola, Florida]],<ref name=eisenbach /> and maintained a "lifelong identification with sailors and seafaring."<ref name=dynes /> After graduating from Columbia in 1970, he enlisted and served as a radioman at a [[NATO]] base in Italy with an unblemished record<ref name=moske /> until "he wrote to a former shipmate, Terry Fountain, about his latest sexual adventures [with both women and men] at his current home port of Naples, Italy".<ref name=shilts>{{cite book | last = Shilts | first = Randy | author-link = Randy Shilts | title = Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military | url = https://archive.org/details/conductunbecomin00shil | url-access = registration | publisher = St. Martin's Press |date=May 1993 | location = New York | pages = [https://archive.org/details/conductunbecomin00shil/page/173 173], 294 | isbn = 0-312-09261-X}}</ref> After Fountain left the letter unattended on his desk, someone turned it over to the [[Naval Criminal Investigative Service|Naval Investigative Service]], which allegedly coerced Fountain into signing a statement that he had sex with Donaldson, which Fountain later recanted. In 1971, "the Navy announced its intention to release [Donaldson] by General Discharge on grounds of suspected homosexual involvement."<ref name=moske /> As [[Randy Shilts]] wrote in [[Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military]]:

{{blockquote|In the tens of thousands of hearings since World War II where comparable actions had been taken on the basis of comparable evidence, the matter ended there, with the sailor skulking away in disgrace. Petty Officer Martin, however, went public with what had happened to him and swore to fight for an [[honorable discharge]]. What was more, he enlisted some powerful support.<ref name=shilts />}}

These supporters included six congressional representatives, including New York's [[Bella Abzug]] (who called his case a "witch-hunt") and [[Edward Koch]]; senators [[Richard Schweiker]] of Pennsylvania and [[Sam Ervin]] of North Carolina; the president of the [[American Psychiatric Association]] (APA), Judd Marmor (who had been "influential in having [[American Psychiatric Association#Homosexuality removed from DSM (1973)|homosexuality removed from the APA's official list of clinical disorders]]"<ref name=palladino>{{cite news
 |last       = Palladino
 |first      = Lisa
 |title      = Obituaries
 |work       = Columbia College Today
 |date       = March 2004
 |url        = http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/mar04/obituaries1.php
 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040430180259/http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/mar04/obituaries1.php
 |archive-date = 2004-04-30
 |access-date = 2008-03-27
}}
</ref>); Chief of Naval Operations Admiral [[Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr.]]; and the [[American Civil Liberties Union]], which provided a staff attorney to represent him.<ref name=eisenbach /><ref name=donaldson /><ref name=shilts />

{{blockquote|Even the dean of [[Columbia College of Columbia University|Columbia College]], Carl Hovde, sent the Navy a letter praising Martin as "a man for whom I have great respect" and making the questionable claim that the young man "never sought controversy."<ref name=eisenbach />}}

Despite the support, he received a [[general discharge]] in 1972. Donaldson continued to fight,<ref name=donaldson /> and, in 1977, his discharge was upgraded to "[[honorable discharge|honorable]]" as part of "[[Jimmy Carter|President Carter]]'s sweeping amnesty program for [[Vietnam War|Vietnam]]-era draft evaders, deserters, and service members",<ref name=shilts /> at which time:

{{blockquote|Martin told ''Gay Week'' "what an honorable discharge means to me is that it is the nation's way of saying that it is proud of gay veterans and by extension that it is proud of millions of gay veterans and current service people. We've come a long way."<ref name=eisenbach />}}

According to [[David Eisenbach|Eisenbach]]:

{{blockquote|Martin's groundbreaking public battle against the Navy kicked off a series of well-publicized challenges to military discharges that harnessed and directed the energy of the gay rights movement in the 1970s.<ref name=eisenbach />}}