Minnesota-Based Corporal Andrew Wilfahrt Died Serving In Afghanistan Where No One Cared He Was Gay

Saturday, the flags at state and federal buildings are lowered at half-staff on orders of Governor Mark Dayton to honour a Minnesota solider killed last Saturday in Afghanistan. Corporal Andrew Wilfahrt of Rosemount was killed when insurgents attacked his unit with a bomb in Kandahar province. The 31 year old is the first known gay member of the military from Minnesota to die in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. His mother, Lori, talked to Minnesota Public Radio’s Morning Edition and says of her son “He was a gentle soul. He was very kind and compassionate. He was interested in a lot of things, but more at a level of detail than what I think most people pursue something. He was fascinated with numbers, and patterns with numbers and palindromes. He would often spot a series of numbers and say, 'Well, if you add up your birthday and your birthday it equals this.' Or, 'All of our birthday dates combined equals our home address.' Just odd things like that. He was a very interesting person. I think he was very learned without going to traditional college system. He read a lot, he loved plays. He really loved music -- that was his passion. He composed music, he was a classical musician but not trained. He was self-taught. He spent many hours doing things like this and pursuing his own education.” Lori says that when Andrew announced he was joining the military she “was speechless,” adding “I thought, 'How on earth did you come to this?' He was kind of a peace activist and he hated war, and there was nothing in his life that indicated that he would ever be interested in the military.” Asked how much it concerned her, knowing her son was gay, that he was enlisting in the armed services, Loris answers “It did a lot. I think it concerned him as well. He spent a lot of time thinking about it and he came to terms with it. He knew he would have to go back in the closet, that he would have to keep that to himself. And he did, for at least part of his stay in the Army. But when I talked to him (or when he wrote maybe) when he was in Afghanistan, he said nobody cares. He said, 'Everybody knows, nobody cares.' He said, 'Even the really conservative, religious types, they didn't care either.' He said it's about something else.”