The Eyes Of Babylon 
A Soldier's Story: 'Coming Out' of Iraq, onto the Stage 

by Nicholas Snow Special To 365Gay.com


“I have no doubt there was talk about me being gay, but it wasn’t based on the fact that I ever sucked a dick,” explained Corporal Jeff Key, United States Marines, over breakfast about his experiences serving in the military. 

“It was because I was compassionate and intelligent, and I could see the behaviors of some of the American service members towards the Iraqis how it was going to cause… how we were recruiting terrorism by our actions over there.” 

I’m frankly a bit fearful to publish this story with the Patriot Act in full force and the free reign of the government to take away our civil rights without the drop of a hat, and Key is fearful as well, but it’s a story that needs to be told—here and in Key’s new one-man show, The Eyes of Babylon, running October 25th through December 2nd in Hollywood. Intensifying the situation is the fact that Key isn’t completely out of the military as this goes to press.

Key makes an entry into his controversial journal of his experiences in Iraq

According to Associate Producer and peace activist Debi Hall, The Eyes of Babylon is story of Key’s personal struggle between tying to reconcile being part of a war that he knows to be illegal and immoral, and a profound commitment to the reasons he became a Marine. Told by Key with excerpts from his personal journals written in Iraq, among other places, The Eyes of Babylon begins the morning of September 11th, and is more “a spiritual epiphany than a documentation of the war…a profoundly personal look inside the conscience of a man faced with near impossible decisions.”

Keep reading. This isn’t a movie of the week. This is real life.

A fellow marine who had heard rumors of Jeff Key’s imminent discharge said to Key, “What’s going on with you?” Key responded, “What do you mean, what’s going on with me? I came out of the closet on CNN. I’ve started a charity for veterans. I’m doing a one-man show based on the journals that I read to you guys from over there. I’m trying to be positive with my life. I’m being discharged because of my homosexuality now.’

Come out come out, wherever you are?

“When I came back from Iraq, I entered a long period of intense introspection,” Key explained. “Although it’s part of my story, it’s not to speak out against the war. I’m trying to speak for something. I’m trying to speak for the idea that someone can, in times of trouble, focus their life’s energy in a way that can bring about positive outcomes for people on earth.”

“A lot of innocent Iraqis are dead—some estimates triple the number of deaths on September 11th, and yet people continue to be amazed that the Iraqis aren’t happy to be liberated, but we still expect the world to be angry and upset with us about September 11th, explained Key. 

"I will not kill a child for oil, ever," Key explained.  Here, he poses with children in Iraq.

“That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I won’t be put in a situation where my choice is to kill an innocent person or not protect the lives of these men that I think of as my brothers. And I know that we rushed to war without a plan to keep the peace, and I know that the decisions that led us into the invasion of Iraq were based on corporate gain. Sadly we’ve come to a time in America when the United States military isn’t the military that defends our nation; it’s a military that will be used for the next four years by the party of choice. That’s horseshit. I will not kill a child for oil, ever.”

How did Key end up enlisting in the Marines, at the age of 34, years after he had been openly gay in certain circles?

“My sober life since I stopped drinking has been about sort of reclaiming those things that I had lost along the way,” Key revealed. “I went back and got a college degree. I came to Hollywood and started finally working in the career field of my choice. I went back to traveling a spiritual path which I had long shunned.” 

Key saw a Marine Recruitment billboard one day and thought, ‘man!’ “I remembered when I was a little kid, I mean, like, as hokey as it sounds,” explained Key. “In the South, many blacks went to Viet Nam because the military has long been a way that impoverished people try to see their way out of that poverty—and it registered with me that that was something noble those people were doing.” When he saw the billboard in 2000, he remembered, “I’ve always wanted to be a Marine.” 

Jeff Key always wanted to be a Marine

‘What are the good reasons for being a Marine,” he asked himself. “Well, to support and defend the constitution. A document written by slave owners that ultimately would emancipate the slaves—I think there’s something beautiful and magical and God-like going on there.”

Amen to that. So, why leave his God-like calling?

“I believe our constitution can save us—that this can be a country where everybody, no matter your sexual orientation, your religion or what color your skin is, you get an equal shot,” said Key. “To support and defend the constitution of the United States—and my oath says, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. To me anybody who sits in the White House and wants to start butchering our constitution is the enemy of our constitution—a domestic enemy of our constitution and it’s my sworn oath to speak out against that.”

“Since I was a little kid, and my mother will laugh when she tells you this, I stood up, I stand up, for the underdog, for defenseless people,” Key stated. “I’m a big bad boy now. I was a skinny little kid. I grew up big and strong. I want to stop the bully in the sandbox from…hurting innocent people. That was a huge justification I gave myself for going to Iraq. I knew Saddam was a son-of-a-bitch and he was horrible to his people. I thought, ‘Yea, I got to stop that.’”

Would Key kill a man, even though he wants to preserve peace on earth?

“If we’re attacked or there’s an immediate threat of an attack, you won’t find anybody that would be more eager to kill than I would. I would love to kill a Nazi. It would make my fucking day. Jesus was a pacifist. I think he’s awesome. I’m not there yet.”

It would be difficult for Key to claim to be courageous if he came out in Iraq as a way of getting the hell out of the military, but he came out after his tour of duty.

Upon his return from Iraq, Key was conflicted. He thought, “Hell, what if I go back? What if I have to go back? And I’m not afraid to die or fight. What if I have to go back and I’m put in a situation where I have to kill somebody and I believe that George Bush took us to war for corporate gain. What am I going to do? How am I going to stand in front of my Creator with this knowledge? I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

Could he be a conscientious objector? “I’m not a pacifist,” Key explained. “I can’t go and say, ‘it’s against my principals to kill.’ There are a lot of people I would like to kill today because of what they are doing to my country and my constitution, and innocent people around the world are dying because of these people. Please, don’t construe that as I’m about to go to a book depository or anything.”

“I’ve had a great propensity to over think things in my life, and get my ass in a crack by thinking and thinking and thinking, and so I sat down at my desk of all places, and I prayed,” stated Key. “And I said, ‘I don’t know what to do. You’ve got me through every possible scrape in my life. Please show me what to do. Clear my mind. Just present me the answer.’ And I got quiet and I listened. And when I opened eyes, it was as if I was able to take a huge step back out of my situation and say, ‘they don’t want gay people. It’s wrong to lie about your sexuality.’”

“It’s wrong,” stated Key. “It’s not only like a choice. It’s wrong for me. I owe it to kids for them to see the fraction of the gay population that little gay kids rarely get the opportunity to see. I owe it to them to be open, to be out—to speak the truth of who I am. And the truth is, you can’t do that and be in the military. There are obviously thousands of gay people who are still serving in the military and make that choice to be quiet. That’s their decision and it’s not my job. It no longer was possible for me to be dishonest in that way.”

So what happened next? He wrote is commanding officer a seven-page letter, which basically stated, “to be true to the commitments that prompted me to become a United States Marine, I can’t serve in the Marine Corps right now because of the way our sword is being wielded. I can’t do it. It’s morally reprehensible to me.”

“At the same time, I decided how spiritually bankrupt I’d become over the last several years of lying, that all I had to do was speak the truth and let the outside world do what they are going to do. That’s it, explained Key. “That is what came from my mediation. It’s not for me to go and tweak the policy or blah blah blah or manipulate or blah. All I have to do is speak the truth and let the world react the way they’re going to. There are people that will want to kill me for doing this show."

The military brass isn’t all bad. Key didn’t realize he should keep going to his drills after disclosing he was gay, so he didn’t, also to avoid creating further conflict. He was ultimately facing an “other than dishonorable discharge” for missing drills, not because he came out. His commanding officer allowed him to make up his drills, even after coming out, so Key could maintain is perfect Marine Corps record. “They initially started to mark me U.A. which is the modern version of AWOL—you know, what George Bush was—so that means I can still be president one day, luckily, although I’d never want the job,” stated Key.

So, he came out. 

“I’ve had one negative reaction, and it was from a gay Marine,” Key explained to my surprise. “The bullet always comes from the back. It’s not surprising to me at all. I want to stay out of judgment where this guy is concerned because he has actually helped me out over the years and he is a good man and I don’t agree with his politics and the way that he runs his life, and he doesn’t agree with the way I do. He identifies very strongly with George Bush, the Republican Party, the Right, and to some extent the Arian crap that I don’t agree with, and it’s troubling to him that I would use ‘the gay card’ as he put it, to get out.”

“Now, with that said,” explained Key, to accentuate the positive, “since I went down to the unit, I’ve run into a lot of Marines that I haven’t seen since Iraq. Some of them are mentioned in the script. Even at the risk of sounding melodramatic, this one Marine that I saw, he goes, ‘well, what’s going on with you?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, what’s going on with me?’ He said, ‘what’s going on with you?’ I said, well, ‘I came out of the closet on CNN. I’ve started a charity for veterans. I’m doing a one-man show based on the journals that I read to you guys from over there. I’m trying to be positive with my life. I’m being discharged because of my homosexuality now.’

“He said, ‘you know, is that it? Are you leaving us?’ “You wouldn’t believe it if it was on film. The guy’s got, like, tears in his eyes, when he says this,” Key added. “I’ve been shoulder to shoulder with the man the whole time I’ve been in the Marine Corps; into Iraq, out of Iraq. And, I said ‘No, Marine, I’m not. That’s what this is about. I’ll never leave you. I will always be there for you. For the rest of your nasty, stupid life, I’m going to be there for you…’

“He let me get a few paces away, and he said, ‘Hey, Key. I love you,’ which was, you know, around fucking other Marines. That’s a big deal.” About other Marines, Key explained, “They’ve been asking me a lot of questions.”

“This project is about being emotionally honest for me, and if ever stop doing that, I’ll feel like I failed,” said Key. “I don’t care what else happens with it—if I can feel that I am staying true and honest about my emotions at every juncture—I feel led by God and I think I feel taken care of, and I don’t care what happens to my physical body. Nobody’s going to eat my soul. I believe absolutely in what I say on stage.” 

The play came into being because Key happened to meet director Yuval Hadadi at Crunch, the gym in Los Angeles. Key mentioned and then ultimately shared his journals with Hadadi, who then revealed he was a director. “What I was really drawn after was the writing and the way he conveyed it,” explained Hadadi.

What drew Associate Producer Debi Hall to the project?

“I’ve always had strong feelings about war period,” she explained. “Particularly the Viet Nam war and wars like that. I was a hippy protestor. In high school, I organized college peace rallies." About the war in Iraq, Hall explained, "Whenever I heard Jeff’s account of it, I thought it was really important that he have a chance to say first hand what his take on it is.”

“I admire his passion about this,” stated Hadadi, “and it’s hard not to agree with what he says. Personally, I don’t think I would react the same way. I would probably see the same things as far as the unjust behavior and the inhumanity and the pain that it causes, but I don’t know that I would take that and do with what he does with it—react so strongly—in such a strong political way.”

Who is the intended audience, from Key’s perspective?

“The audience is anyone who cares about any of us—especially anybody who cares about the veterans of the United States military that went to Iraq—a nation of people across the world that they had never met, that had never done anything to us. Anybody who gives a shit about people, humanity, about our future, is the audience for this piece.”