Category Archives: same-sex marriage

When I joined the military it was illegal to be homosexual, then it became optional, and now it’s legal. I’m getting out before the Democrats make it mandatory. — Sgt. Harry Berres, USMC

A gay Marine greets his husband upon his return from a deployment.

The Netflix series “Boots” is not “woke garbage,” as the United States Department of Defence alleged. No, while it is fiction, it is good storytelling. I admit, when I saw the trailer and the still images, a part of me rolled my eyes. I suspected it might be a cheesy rom-com featuring queeny ephebes prancing through the United States Marine Corps boot camp. On the contrary, the protagonist, Cameron Cope, is a gay seventeen-year-old high school graduate who chose military service, specifically the Marines, because his good friend had enlisted, and he wanted a change. The story is set in 1990, when male homosexuality was grounds for refusal in enlistment and grounds for discharge. He was reminded of that upon arrival at Parris Island, where a sign at the entrance for induction listed reasons for disqualification that included homosexuality. He kept his homosexuality to himself, though those around him suspected that he was gay.

The U.S. Department of Defense was clear when it issued the following regulation to clarify its stand in 1981:

(DOD Directive 1332.14 (Enlisted Administrative Separations), January 1981)

Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission. The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among service members; to ensure the integrity of the system of rank and command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of service members who frequently must live and work in close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the armed forces; to maintain the public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.

Under this regulation, persons having homosexual proclivities were deemed unfit for military service and either refused induction into military service or quietly mustered out with either a general, undesirable or dishonorable discharge if found out after having been inducted. The consequences of the three types of discharge varied in degree of severity. Still, in each, the individual was ineligible for veterans’ benefits and could face discrimination in employment in civilian life. That was the reality in 1990. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the United States Military was not enacted until 1993. So, serving in the U.S. Military in 1990 as a gay man meant you had to conceal the truth about yourself on pain of serious consequences.

As the story unfolded, it was revealed that one of the drill instructors, Staff Sergeant Sullivan, a seasoned Marine with a distinguished service record and a recipient of the Silver Star, was a gay man. Despite his impeccable record, he came under investigation when a man, a Major in the Marine Corps, with whom he had a romance, was outed and dismissed from the service. Despite the support of his commanding officer and enlisted colleagues, he chose to nearly beat a man to death in a bar fight, knowing it would result in a dishonorable discharge from the service. In his estimation, a conviction of aggravated assault of a civilian was preferable to being outed and dismissed in disgrace as a homosexual. The tragedy in his case was that had he held on another three years, he could have continued his career in the Marines—the U.S. Department of Defense is correct in pointing out that in 2025, gay men are free to serve openly. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and the general ban on gays serving in the military were lifted in 2011. “Boots,” however, is set in 1990, when gay men did not have the option of serving with discretion, let alone openly. So, no, “Boots” is not “woke garbage,” it is well-written and superbly acted by the stellar cast. I highly recommend watching the series.

Posted by Geoffrey

It is a great plague to be too handsome a man. — Plautus

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When I first viewed the photo, the portrait of the two young men struck me. Initially, I could not quite place why, but then it dawned on me. In the summer of 1980, I was a reservist in the Canadian Army. I served in the 30th Field Artillery Regiment based in Ottawa. It was the summer following my graduation from high school and before my enrollment at Queen’s University in Kingston. I went to Canadian Forces Base Petawawa to work as a driver in a transportation company through July and August. I worked with young men from other regiments who were posted there, too–we were in our late teens and early twenties.

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I am the Love that Dare not Speak its Name. ― Alfred B. Douglas

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This self-portrait, taken in Havelock, New Brunswick, shows the simplicity of the intimacy shared by Leonard Olive Keith (1891-1950) and Joseph Austin “Cub” Coates (1899-1965), who lived and loved in the first half of the 20th century. They were two men in love in Canada when male homosexuality was a crime in Canadian law, and public prejudice against male homosexuality was openly expressed. It was as simple as it is in the present. Some men are romantically and sexually attracted to men. It is a natural expression of human sexual attraction and behaviour. To those who knew and loved them, they were Len and Cub, a homosexual couple. To those who reviled male homosexuals, they were beneath contempt. They were what we call normal gays in the 21st century. Len was a harness racing driver who opened a garage after serving as an engineer in the Canadian Army in World War I. Cub was a mechanic who served as an engineer in the Canadian Army in World War I and volunteered for service in the Canadian Army in World War II. They were ordinary men who had a sense of duty, served their King and country as volunteers in the Great War, and found love and companionship in each other’s company. Despite their discretion, suspicion over their relationship in Havelock drove them apart in the 1920s. Len moved to the United States, where he lived out his days. Cub married in 1940. That fate was not unusual for gay men in Canada in the 20th century.

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There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved. — Boy George

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I recall when I was in university in 1982. I enrolled in a film studies class, and one of the films we watched was Pagan Rhapsody. There is a scene in the film where two men play a sex scene. Though the scene was as vanilla as possible–there was kissing and a little friendly groping (nothing graphic)–the student audience’s vocal expressions of disgust were notable. In 2024, male homosexuality was generally accepted as a natural expression of human intimacy and treated with sensitivity in film and television. Netflix series such as Young Royals and Heartstopper feature a gay romance and intimacy between high school boys in a way that leaves something to the viewers’ imagination. Both series are immensely popular with younger viewers. Things have changed since the screening of Pagan Rhapsody in 1982. Still, when it comes to public perceptions of intimacy between gay men, there are a lot of people who have an unsavoury fixation on what they imagine goes on when two men are intimate. I get expressions of disgust in the comments on blog posts I write on gay rights advocacy, where people say things like, “There’s nothing more disgusting than two men fucking each other in the ass,” and “Cocksucking is not a men’s issue.” I mean, that is beyond the pale.

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I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important. — Ayn Rand

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In the summer of 1987, I lived with my boyfriend Fabio in a two-bedroom apartment in Kingston, Ontario. We met as students at Queen’s University and secretly carried on our love affair before moving in together. We became boyfriends during the burgeoning AIDS crisis. One evening, we sat in bed and watched a panel discussion held by one of the American News Networks–I cannot remember which one. What struck me was the inflammatory opening remark made by a conservative Congressman, whose name I do not remember, who asserted that “perversion and promiscuity” were to blame for the AIDS crisis. That sentiment was shared through the 1980s. I remember the stand-up comic Sam Kinison, who screamed in one of his routines that AIDS became an epidemic “because a few fags fuck some monkeys; they got tired of their own assholes.” Jerry Falwell claimed it was God’s judgement on homosexuals and blamed the spread of the disease into the innocent heterosexual population on bisexual men. Yes, AIDS was seen as a gay plague. Fabio and I, like countless gay men in the 1980s, were concerned. There was uncertainty about how easily the virus was transmitted. Before the dawn of the AIDS crisis, our biggest concern as students in the 1980s was the risk of an unwanted pregnancy or getting herpes.

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The fact remains; chauvinism is prevailing. — Emma Bonino

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I lurk on the Facebook page of a Canadian queer activist. I never knew he existed until he appeared unexpectedly on my news feed. I am a liberal-minded man; I believe in liberalism, pluralism, and equality in law and opportunity instead of collectivism and diversity, equity and inclusion. I don’t like what he says, and I find his attitude and behaviour contemptible. He makes me think of my fieldwork when I studied the sociology of religion and religious studies at Queen’s University in the 1980s. I interacted with various Christian faith communities, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestants. I met many people, some of whom were the worst hypocrites. The man in question is the archetypal example of a religious hypocrite. His smug self-righteousness is insufferable. He reminds me of Jerry Falwell’s unctuous self-righteousness; he is unbearable. What is worse is his bigotry. He does not listen to his critics. He dismisses them as anti-queer chauvinists and haters, promptly blocking them. If push came to shove, he would happily try to cancel them.

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Being gay is like being left-handed. Some people are, most people aren’t and nobody really knows why. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way things are. — Unknown

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I watched a documentary in the 1990s. It was about the investigation into the molestation and murder of a prepubescent boy in England in the 1970s. It was in the 1970s, so suspicion immediately fell on gay men. The police opened an investigation and right away approached known homosexuals and entered gay bars, asking men to come to the station for questioning. The men were photographed, and detailed notes were taken of the interviews. At one point, a gay man was accused by another of the crime. Once the accused realized that he was under suspicion, he told the detectives interviewing him that he was saying nothing without his solicitor present. It turned out that the accusation was wrongful and levelled against him by another man who had a grudge. Eventually, the culprit was found and confessed when presented with evidence against him. He was not a gay man and had no previous suspicion of sexual interference with boys. He said that the boy struggled during and after the assault and that he had not meant to kill him. The man was convicted of the crimes of manslaughter and sexually assaulting the boy. He was imprisoned for his crimes. With the case closed, the police destroyed the evidence they collected in their investigation: the photos and notes from the interviews of the gay men.

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. ― H.L. Mencken

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Geoffrey out duck hunting.

The words “gun lobby” and “gun nut” are slurs invented by prohibitionists–people opposed to gun ownership and hunting–to besmirch the character of gun owners and hunters. I heard the term “gun nut” used on American television sitcoms like “All in the Family” as early as the 1970s. I shrugged it off at the time as inconsequential. I had no reason to believe as a boy that there was anything wrong with gun ownership and hunting. I remember how other children brought things like duck wings for show and tell in kindergarten and primary school. Wings taken from the wild ducks that their older brothers and fathers shot while out hunting. Other children proudly told the class about their fathers, who had returned from successful big game hunts. My dad and my uncle enjoyed hunting cottontail and jackrabbits when I was a boy. It was not until late in 1989, following the mass shooting at the engineering school at the University of Montreal that I first heard mention of the “gun lobby” used as a pejorative term in public parlance. It came as an unwelcome surprise. Continue reading →

Sing if you’re glad to be gay, sing if you’re happy that way. — the Tom Robinson Band

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Robinson

An accusation was levelled at me last year when I publicly rejected the notion that gay became “queer.” The charge, in short, is that I am a selfish gay man. Now that gay rights are secured–the removal of the stigma of being gay, the freedom to live openly, to participate fully in society, and the right to marry among them–I am content to “pull the ladder up after me.” That I reject “queer theory” is true; I made no secret of that. In particular, I object to the conflation of the transgender ideology with male homosexuality–notably gay rights advocacy. In a recent essay, I discussed the emergence of a movement called the LGB Alliance–an initiative to separate the T from the LGB. The problem I found with the LGB Alliance is that it is part of a struggle among feminists–a quarrel over whether transgender women are women or not and if there is a place for transgender women in the feminist movement. I stand by what I wrote in my earlier essay: feminist causes have no bearing on gay men’s issues, no more than does the transgender ideology. The gay rights movement and transgender ideology are unrelated and neither the twain should meet. Continue reading →

The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It’s part of America. — Jim Jarmusch

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The history of the gay rights movement in the United States is fascinating. Is it a civil rights movement or is it a social justice movement? Is gay a demographic or is gay a community? Are gay rights the drive for civil rights, that gay people be at liberty, as individuals, to participate in society, openly, and free from persecution? Is it a social justice movement, the gay community driven by a countercultural constituency, intent on separating itself from mainstream culture? The answer to these questions is the gay rights movement in the United States is a combination of the two perspectives. To date, the successes of the gay rights movement in the United States are laudable. The repeal of laws that criminalized homosexual sex is a significant gain. Gay people live openly and are free to marry. True, elements of anti-gay prejudice linger, mainly from the ranks of the religious and socially conservative; moreover, there is only a patchwork of laws in place across the 50 states that prohibit discrimination in employment on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, I think these are the least of the worries for the gay rights movement in the United States. While both perspectives, civil rights and social justice, contributed to the success of the gay rights movement; what most concerns me about the current state of the gay rights movement in the United States is the influence of a decidedly countercultural constituency of U.S. society on the gay rights movement. In my opinion, this only undermines the successes of the gay rights movement in the United States and hinders its progress as a civil rights movement. Continue reading →