After an excursion to Coney Island, Ryan Conklin, his then girlfriend Belle, and their chaperone JD Ordonez, were riding back and JD asked Ryan about the possibility of him being required to return to the Army. Ryan explained that until September 10, 2010, as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) he could be recalled back to activity duty in the military. He said it was like a lottery and if his number was picked he would have no choice but to return. This prompted JD to ask Ryan whether or not he could get out of the conscription if he would just declare that he was gay. Ryan emphatically replied, "No." He said that a (straight) person declaring himself to be gay would not get out of the Army that way. Ryan called the premise "folklore". As an example of the ineffectiveness of the scheme, Ryan told a story of two guys in basic training who tried to say that they were gay. The two were then told to prove it, but they couldn't show any hard evidence. Their effort failed.
JD suggested that Ryan might have an easier time of it because he was seen kissing the drag queen Peppermint. Ryan laughed at the thought because he had always found the incident to be funny and he couldn't care less. But then realizing conservative girlfriend and unblinking camera were in the car, his countenance quickly lost its smile and he sternly said, "HE kissed ME!" He then added, rather incongruously, "It's a fine line; there's a big difference."
Ryan acknowledged that he was aware that there were gays in the military, but that he was unaware of which of the soldiers he had served with were gay.
Ryan later said the same thing in an interview he did with the GLAAD organization. He also said in that interview that he was cool with serving along side gays in his unit. When asked specifically about the hypothetical of serving directly with JD, Ryan was in a little bit of a quandary. He wanted to be consistent in his answer, but at the same time he knew JD was not necessarily a good example. Ryan tripped through several phrases, but then settled on, "It's a gun in his hand, it's a gun in my hand, we're a team." -- Bravo.
