Dusty’s father became a Baptist minister for the Baptist Missionary Association when she was six. This began a moving saga in which she attended ten different schools before she graduated at age 17 from high school. She earned on Associate of Arts degree from Jacksonville Baptist College in Jacksonville, Texas, in 1965. Then she attended University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in 1970 from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish with a minor in Education.
Pruitt entered the Army as a second lieutenant in 1970. There she came to understand that she was gay. After meeting Sgt. Sandy McMillan in 1971, she was introduced to Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Atlanta, Georgia. After being transferred to Army Recruiting in Dallas, Texas, Pruitt joined Agape MCC in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1972 as a charter member.
She was transferred from Army active duty to the Reserves in 1976 and began studying at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. In 1980, she became the first openly gay or lesbian person to graduate with the Master of Divinity degree from that school. She began pastoring the Metropolitan Community Church in Long Beach, California, where she pastored for 15 years, until 1995.
In 1983, after pastoring MCC Long Beach for three years and continuing to drill with the Army Reserve two times a month and two weeks a year, she gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times about her work with MCC as an example of how one person could reconcile the often wrenching conflict many gay men and lesbians have between gay and God. This article was picked up by Pruitt’s commander in the Individual Ready Reserve who initiated an investigation into Pruitt’s moral character (for being gay). This investigation took away her promotion to Major and gave her an honorable discharge. Pruitt went to the American Civil Liberties Union, which took her case along with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. The ensuing 12-year legal battle was resolved in 1995 with Pruitt’s being reinstated, accorded the promotion to Major, and then retired with the Army Reserves. The case was denied certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court thereby allowing a postive ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to remain in effect–which resulted in Grethe Cammermeyer, Keith Meinhold, and Mel Dahl all being allowed to serve as openly gay in the service until their retirements as well.
Pruitt was honored for her persistence and courage by many different groups during these twelve years, including the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, Lutherans Concerned, MCC, Southern California Women for Understanding, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and other gay and lesbian organizations. She was named the first Advocate Woman of the Year in 1991.
After leaving MCC Long Beach, Pruitt served for five years as the MCC Southwest District’s New Works Coordinator and was responsible for six new church starts in that District. She served as pastor of MCC Family in Christ in Fort Collins, Colorado, before retiring from MCC in 2001 with 25 years of service. She is currently an active minister with the United Church of Christ.
After pursuing a Clinical Pastoral Education Internship for one year, Rev. Dr. Pruitt moved in August, 2007 from Yuma, Arizona to Sussex County, Delaware. She served as a hospice chaplain until April 2013. In addition she is also the Pastor of Safe Harbor UCC in Sussex County, Delaware.
Her papers are held at ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives. The Dusty Pruitt Collection is comprised of personal and professional papers (1945-2002, bulk 1983-1995) from minister, Army veteran and activist Rev. Dr. Dusty Pruitt. The papers include reports, legal briefs, interviews, correspondence, administration records, videocassettes, photographs and clippings from Pruitt related to a 12-year legal dispute with the Department of Defense pertaining to her sexual orientation; a proposed film about Pruitt, entitled A Woman at War; and Pruitt's ministry at the Metropolitan Community Church in Long Beach, California.
Source: http://dustypruitt.com/?page_id=33
Further Readings:
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: AuthorHouse (August 2, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1420844008
ISBN-13: 978-1420844009
Amazon: Serving In Silence
VIETNAM VETERAN. RECIPIENT OF THE BRONZE STAR. MOTHER OF FOUR. VA. NURSE OF THE YEAR DISCHARGED. In 1989, during a routine interview for top-secret security clearance, U.S Army Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer revealed that she was a lesbian-and began an ordeal that continues to this day. Despite her distinguished twenty-six-year military career, she was discharged from the U.S. Army. Her dismissal has garnered intense media coverage and stirred debate all the way to the presidency. In this revealing autobiography Cammermeyer writes of her decision to challenge the official policy on homosexuals in the military and of her recent victory in Federal District Court. But much more than a book laws and politics, Serving in Silence is about coming of age, being a mother, and finding one's center; about "coming out" the daily horrors of nursing in Vietnam, and a female soldier's brave life. THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE TELEVISION MOVIE
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (July 3, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0815325800
ISBN-13: 978-0815325802
Amazon: Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political Perspectives on Lesbians and Gays in the Military
Ten original essays place the current debate over homosexual military service in its historical, theoretical, political, and policy context.
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (December 22, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807859559
Amazon: Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the directive of President Clinton's 1993 military policy regarding gay and lesbian soldiers. This official silence continued a collective amnesia about the patriotic service and courageous sacrifices of homosexual troops. Ask and Tell recovers these lost voices, offering a rich chronicle of the history of gay and lesbian service in the U.S. military from World War II to the Iraq War.
Drawing on more than 50 interviews with gay and lesbian veterans, Steve Estes charts the evolution of policy toward homosexuals in the military over the past 65 years, uncovering the ways that silence about sexuality and military service has affected the identities of gay veterans. These veteran voices—harrowing, heroic, and on the record—reveal the extraordinary stories of ordinary Americans, men and women who simply did their duty and served their country in the face of homophobia, prejudice, and enemy fire. Far from undermining national security, unit cohesion, or troop morale, Estes demonstrates, these veterans strengthened the U.S. military in times of war and peace. He also examines challenges to the ban on homosexual service, placing them in the context of the wider movement for gay rights and gay liberation. Ask and Tell is an important compilation of unheard voices, offering Americans a new understanding of the value of all the men and women who serve and protect them.
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