Tell: An Intimate History of Gay Men the Milary | GQ

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As "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to an end, we sent Chris Heath to terview dozens of gay servicemen om the past and prent to fd out what life was really like as Ameri's ary stggled wh s last great inty crisis

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US NAVY LNCH SHIP NAMED FOR GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST HARVEY MILK

A Navy ship named for gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was ma to rign om the force bee of his sexual orientatn, was lnched San Diego Saturday. * gay navy pic *

While servg as a cy supervisor, Milk troduced legislatn to protect the gay muny, cludg a gay rights ordance 1978 to ban discrimatn agast LGBTQ hog or employment.

Before "don't ask, don't tell" was officially repealed for gay, lbian, and bisexual ary personnel 2011, a photo of a male Mare drag uld have land him hot water. "Lbian, gay, and bisexual ary personnel had been servg our untry for s whout receivg equal protectn, while transgenr troops are still prohibed om servg openly.

The addrs about ne months after the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, banng gay active-duty members om servg openly, was story began December 2010, when Congrs officially repealed the policy, but remaed place until Sept.

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More than 200 active duty troops and war veterans wavg small Amerin flags alongsi rabow banners marched San Diego's gay pri para what is believed to be the first time an intifiable group of active duty troops has participated such an event the U. Ary passed a historic tone Tuday wh the repeal of the ban on gays servg openly uniform, endg a prohibn that Print Barack Obama said had forced gay and lbian service members to "lie about who they are.

HISTORY OF GAYS THE MILARY--PICTURES

The photo, ma some five months after the repeal of the ary's "don't ask don't tell" policy prohibg gay servicemen om openly acknowledgg their sexualy, is among the first showg a gay active duty serviceman uniform kissg his partner at a homeg. (AP Photo/David Lewis) (Natnal Journal) Norwich Universy's Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgenr, Qutng, and Alli Club display is seen the library for guts and stunts to learn more about their issu and programs at the Norwich Universy Northfield, Vt. Barely six months after the expiratn of the ary's "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibg gay service members om servg openly, the natn's olst private ary amy is holdg s first gay pri week.

At Wt Pot, the alumni gay advocy group Knights Out was able to hold the first stallment March of what is tend to be an annual dner regnn of gay and lbian graduat and ts. The OutServe Learship Summ is signed to highlight the diversy of gays the ary and the challeng they face, and marks the largt gatherg of gay troops one lotn sce the ban was lifted last month. The two men are parents to Ethan, a prec 13-year-old known the flat, clay and pe untry as the only kid school wh two gay first openly gay SEAL has built a new life here at age 41 wh a fay that has replaced the two fai he lost — the one that raised him and the one he built wh fellow SEALs.

GAY NAVY SAILOR'S HOMEG KISS WH HBAND AFTER 7-MONTH DEPLOYMENT SETS OFF OUTRAGE

Both his parents and the Navy banished him bee he’s this steamy night, the two gay parents and their straight son are sweatg and shovg as they fight to w a roughhoe driveway basketball game lled Cheater Ball. They are close, and necsarily so, sce a gay marriage — not to mentn gay parentg — is viewed wh ep spicn and outright hostily perhaps the most anti-gay state the Jon and Whe attend Ethan’s baseball gam, they say, ach and other parents barely speak to them. They gossiped about him, ridiculg gays and sayg a homosexual SEAL would stroy un Navy dropped s vtigatn after Jon enlisted a natnal group that advot for gays the ary, and after members of Congrs tervened.

Last December, they drove to Indiana to be married by a urt, 37, had lived his own secret, tormented life growg up Athens, where gays were ridiculed and monized. ” His father apologized for all his gay slurs over the and his brother, Matt, helped nvce Jon to self-publish a memoir, “Pri: The Story of the First Openly Gay Navy SEAL, ” released October. ”Jon and Whe want to sell the hoe and move Ethan to a public school nearby Huntsville, which they ll “a progrsive island” a state so hostile to gay marriage that s chief Supreme Court jtice orred unti to disobey a feral urt orr Febary permtg gay fay feels fortable Huntsville, home to scientists and engeers om across the untry who work fense and aerospace.

“Of urse, every day I take a drive is a gay pri para, ’’ Whe clients of their secury pany don’t particularly re that ’s owned and managed by two gay men, Whe says.

NAVY’S FIRST OPENLY GAY SEAL BUILDS HIS LIFE ANEW

The two are a former SEAL and former p, after all, and Jon served for years as a secury ntractor Afghanistan and Iraq after leavg the, Jon is active the Trevor Project, which operat 24-hour suici hotl for troubled lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr young people. Many straight, gay and bisexual men have said that the shared showers, latr and changg areas; the pent-up horns and need for sexual exprsn all make the ary a place that awakens same-sex sire. Th, homoerotic iatn ruals allow servicemembers to flict the ab they’ve endured and also tt new members’ willgns to subm to tradn and group-thk whout succumbg to emotn or “stctive” homosexual sir.

Jane Ward, thor of Not Gay: Sex between Straight Whe Men, says that the thkg surroundg the ruals is, “If you endure together this kd of mortifyg, huiatg and embarrassg homosexual act, then that not only toughens up your body, but will also build and strengthen that bond around you. It was a behavr — accepted by some cultur and nsired sful by at the turn of the 20th century, the ia of homosexualy shifted om a practice to a liftyle and an inty. As this new nceptn of homosexualy as a stigmatized and onero intifier took root Amerin culture, men began to be much more reful to not send msag to other men, and to women, that they were gay.

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At the same time, also may expla why untri wh a more nservative, relig culture, such as Ai or the Middle East, where men do engage homosexual acts, but still nsir homosexualy the “crime that nnot be spoken, ” remas mon for men to be affectnate wh one another and fortable wh thgs like holdg hands as they walk. The men’s very fortable and faiar pos and body language might make the men look like gay lovers to the morn eye — and they uld very well have been — but that was not the msage they were sendg at the time.

Bee homosexualy, even if thought of as a practice rather than an inty, was not somethg publicly exprsed, the men were not knowgly outg themselv the shots; their pos were mon, and simply reflected the timacy and tensy of male iendships at the time — none of the photos would have ed their ntemporari to bat an the thor of Picturg Men, John Ibson, nducted a survey of morn day portra studs to ask if they had ever had two men e to have their photo taken, he found that the event was so rare that many of the photographers he spoke to had never seen happen durg their reer. The snapshots ually were veloped by someone else who would have gotten a look at all of them, so aga, the pictur were not likely purposeful exprsns of gay love, but rather ptured the very mon level of fort men felt wh one another durg the early 20th of the reasons male iendships were so tense durg the 19th and early 20th centuri, is that socializatn was largely separated by sex; men spent most their time wh other men, women wh other women.

In the 50s, some psychologists theorized that genr-segregated socializatn spurred homosexualy, and as cultural mor changed general, snapshots of only men together were supplanted by those of ed all male environments, such as mg mps or navy ships, was mon for men to hold danc, wh half the men wearg a patch or some other marker to signate them as the “women” for the eveng.

TELL: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF GAY MEN THE MILARY

But the 50s, when homosexualy reached s peak of pathologizatn, eventually they too created more space between themselv, and while still affectnate began to teract wh ls ease and ’s not te that Amerin men are no longer affectnate wh each other at all.

Servg is such an unqutnably manly thg, that homophobia dissipat; soldiers re ls about one’s sexualy than whether the man n get the job man who served WWII and experienced tense mararie wh his battlefield brothers, often had trouble adjtg to life back home, which he got married, settled the suburbs, and felt cut off and isolated om other men and the kd of ep iendships he had enjoyed durg the BuddyLife is a book that we study Some of s leav brg a sigh There was wrten by a buddy That we mt part, you and INights are long sce you went away I thk about you all through the day My buddy, my buddy Nobody que so te Miss your voice, the touch of your hand Jt long to know that you unrstand My buddy, my buddy Your buddy miss youMiss your voice, the touch of your hand Jt long to know that you unrstand My buddy, my buddy Your buddy miss youYour buddy miss you, y I doWrten 1922 by Walter Donaldson, “My Buddy” was origally spired by the heartbreakg ath of Donaldson’s fiancee, but was adopted durg WWII by the troops as a way to exprs their ep attachment to each other.

And may also be traced to the culture’s greater acceptance of homosexualy, although that has turn solidified beg gay as an inty, and seems unlikely that men will cease wantg to munite to others whether they are homosexual or heterosexual anytime soon.

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