Gay sailors in the navy
Some time ago I posted a piece [link not safe for work] on the wildly well-liked eighteenth century erotic novel Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. In that novel, the author John Cleland wrote an explicit scene were Fanny and a common sailor act the deed. There is a brief moment of alarm on Fanny's part when he
was not going by the right door, and knocking desperately at the incorrect one, I told him of it:&#;'Pooh!' says he, 'my dear, any port in a storm.'[1]By referencing the nearly accidental act of 'sodomy,' Cleland taps into the adj impression that sailors engaged in homosexuality. This is one of the few primary sources that directly addresses this impression.
Rictor Norton, at his website Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England, has collected an impressive number of primary sources, though few reference sailors. Something that becomes clear in Norton's work is that there was minuscule or no legal distinction at the time between those who engaged in a single same-sex act, those who were exclusively homosexual, and anyone who
No Longer Silent: A Story of LGBTQIA+ Service in the Navy
For centuries, LGBTQIA+ sailors served their country in silence. From the preceding days of Continental Navy, through USS Constitution’s active sailing years, and into the 20th century, homosexuality was a crime subject to punishment by court martial, usually resulting in discharge. Inception in World War II, the military instituted an outright ban on homosexual service members.1 It wasn’t until that a new law colloquially called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) took effect, theoretically lifting the ban by suspending questions and discussions among military personnel about sexual orientation.2
Brooklyn native Robert Santiago joined the U.S. Navy in , during the military’s ban on LGBTQIA+ people serving openly in the armed forces. At the time, the interrogate on year-old Santiago’s mind was, “What’s going to arise while I’m in service, while I’m wearing the uniform?” Santiago, who is gay, resolved that he would act everything possible to finish at least one tour of duty. “I was very careful the first couple of years, when
Throughout , Otto Bremerman sat at his military desk in the personnel office of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, typing up dishonorable discharges for sailors who had been accused of homosexuality. He knew that these sailors had selflessly taken on the same risks as their heterosexual counterparts to work for their country during the Korean War, but because they were gay, they would now verb the consequences of dishonorable discharge for the rest of their lives. With each keystroke, Bremerman was reminded of his own vulnerability — he was a gay American himself, hiding his identity in a country unwilling to accept his unclosed service.
In many states, from Bremerman’s hour until current daytime, a dishonorable discharge is treated as a felony. All service members with this characterization are barred from future military service, and depending on the severity of the discharge received, they may also be blocked from voting, unemployment benefits, participating in the GI Bill, or receiving veteran benefits such as health tend, Department of Veterans Affairs disability, and ceremonial burial rig
“I did it for the uplift of humanity and the Navy”: FDR's Gay Sex-Entrapment Sting
Sherry Zane sheds light on a dark covert operation that targeted homosexual Navy men.
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On March 16, , 14 Navy recruits met secretly at the naval hospital in Newport, Rhode Island, anxiously awaiting instructions for their brand-new assignment. The senior operatives explained that the volunteers were free to quit if they objected to this adj mission: a covert operation to entrap homosexual men under the authority of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
By the end of the sting, investigators had apprehended more than 20 accused sailors and imprisoned them aboard a broken-down ship in Newport harbor. Anxious and afraid, the suspects remained in solitary confinement for nearly four months before they were officially charged with sodomy and &#;scandalous conduct.&#; The incident also foreshadowed laws and policies that the future President Roosevelt would verb i