In the Navy

Cool article in The New York Times today about how, five years after Britain lifted its ban on gay men and women in the military, the Royal Navy is now actively encouraging gay soldiers to enlist and taking steps to make life easier on them:

Gays in Britain have benefited from a number of new laws, including one that makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of workers' sexuality.

Last year, Parliament passed the Civil Partnership Act, which gives marriage-style rights to British gays who have registered as couples. The entire military is subject to the legislation, and starting in the fall, gay couples in the military who have registered under the act will be allowed to apply for housing in quarters previously reserved for married couples.

The new effort continues a pattern of changing official attitudes in the navy - once derided as running on rum, sodomy and the lash, in a phrase usually attributed to Winston Churchill. And while most European militaries have lifted bans on gays, none have been as active as the Royal Navy in encouraging their service.

Until a European court ruled in 1999 that Britain's ban on gays in the military violated European human-rights laws, the navy, along with the rest of the country's military, followed a no-exceptions policy of dismissing service men and women who were found to be gay, often after long and intrusive investigations.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., we continue to discharge gay and lesbian soldiers under the extraordinarily ill-conceived Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that President Clinton signed into law (lest we now overstate the contributions he made to fighting discrimination against LGBT people). According to the Department of Defense, 653 servicemembers were discharged in Fiscal Year 2004. Twenty of those discharged were Arabic-speaking translators, who are in short supply, particularly now in the Age o' Terror. (For more on the military's gay ban, see the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network website. They have several reports detailing its effects.)

While I believe that this war was ill-conceived, and that the soldiers in Iraq were sent there only to protect U.S. oil interests (Halliburton, anyone?), "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" stops LGBT people from ever becoming full citizens. Not only do we not get the full privileges of citizenship (Social Security benefits for our spouses, equal protection under the law, etc.) but we are also denied the opportunity to serve our country honestly and openly. Britain understands that. Why doesn't the United States?