# RN is advertising for Gay Sailors?



## big bad john (21 Feb 2005)

'Soon gay sailors will outnumber gay ballet dancers' 

Colin Richardson
Monday February 21, 2005
The Guardian 

"Fifty per cent of the fleet have sinned homosexually at some time in their naval career," declared a horrified Admiral Sir Frank Roddam Twiss, the second sea lord, in 1968. Admiral Sir John Fitzroy Duyland Bush, head of the Western Fleet, concurred: "There is, regrettably, ample evidence that homosexual practices are rife in the Fleet."
Well, of course. Of the three traditional components of naval life in Churchill's famous line, the lash was officially abolished in 1949 and the daily rum ration in 1970. Homosexuality is the only surviving tradition, and in 2000 it was given official blessing.

After a legal battle initiated by four former members of the Royal Navy and the RAF the government lifted the ban on openly gay people serving in the armed forces. The move was welcomed by just about everyone, with the exception of most Conservative politicians.

"This appalling decision will be greeted with dismay," said Aldershot's Tory MP Gerald Howarth, "particularly by ordinary soldiers in Her Majesty's forces, many of whom joined the services precisely because they wished to turn their backs on some of the values of modern society."

Turn their backs, eh? Let's hope that none of them dropped their soap in the shower. In fact, most "ordinary soldiers" - or sailors or pilots, for that matter - have proved themselves to be rather more grown up than the likes of Mr Howarth.

The Navy's decision to advertise openly for gay recruits shows just how far we have come in the five years since the lifting of the ban. And that can only be because the tides had long since changed, leaving all those retired rear admirals and Tory MPs well and truly beached.

 I remember interviewing quite a senior naval officer shortly after the lifting of the ban. He was planning to take his boyfriend to a mess dinner on board ship, with the full backing of his commanding officers. As far as I know, the defences of our island realm are still intact.

The Navy advert is yet another sign that we have grown up as a nation. The police are ahead of the game, having started to advertise for recruits in the gay press in the mid-90s. I used to say then that I knew more gay police officers than I did gay hairdressers. It surely won't be long before openly gay sailors outnumber openly gay ballet dancers.

 · Colin Richardson is a former editor of Gay Times


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## pbi (21 Feb 2005)

Deleted


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## big bad john (21 Feb 2005)

Hey, I retired from the Marines, the first thing we learned was not to bend over near a sailor.   LOL


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## pbi (21 Feb 2005)

Didn't Winston Churchill comment that the three most outstanding features of RN service were "the Rum, the Bum, and the Lash?" Oh-wait-they said that already. Arrrgh, Billy. Grab that railing tightly!
(Sorry-couldn't resist...)

Cheers.


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## Kirkhill (21 Feb 2005)

I knew there must have been a reason there were never any Highland Marines.


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## big bad john (26 Feb 2005)

When it comes to sex, the Navy is more like a zoo than the Church of England
By Adam Nicolson
(Filed: 26/02/2005)

You may have missed the key new ruling on homosexuality that has heartened the gay world: the authorities in Bremerhaven zoo have decided to let three gay penguin couples stay together. For years, the Humboldt's penguins had been doing everything that straight penguin couples do - courting displays, nest-building, sex - but never laid an egg. Then the zoo keepers looked a little closer and found that all six were all male.

  

Crisis. Four lovely female penguins were shipped in from Sweden and paraded up and down in front of the boys. Swedish girl and German boy were even shut up together in the penguin equivalent of a Brighton hotel. Absolutely nothing. The men penguins stared out of the windows, longing for their boyfriends. The Swedish girls polished their nails and thought of Stockholm. Penguins were heard to pine.

The (human) gay community then rose in outrage, bombarded the zoo with protests and e-mails and now the gay penguins are back together, so happy, nest-building, mutually displaying and having marvellous sex. One couple - I suppose this the penguin version of having a poodle - has been seen carefully looking after an egg-shaped stone.

If that is one triumph for gay liberation this week, there has of course been another. All round the world, naval officers have been reeling at the Royal Navy's announcement that it would be encouraging the recruitment of gays and lesbians, and that gay naval couples would now be housed together in married quarters. The Americans, who are said to spend $200 million a year on weeding closet homosexuals out of important jobs in the armed forces, don't quite know where to look. This is scarcely in the tradition of Nelson's Navy. Or is it? 

The authorities in Nelson's Navy hated buggery, not first because they thought it was a sin, but more importantly because it was disorderly and disgusting. The offence was always reported in the London and Portsmouth papers, rather excitedly, as "the horrid and abominable crime which delicacy forbids us to name", but the poor sods who had to appear before courts martial were summoned on the basis of two perfectly explicit Articles of War.

The more obvious, Article 29 of the Admiralty Code, was straightforward enough: "If any Person in the Fleet shall commit the unnatural and detestable Sin of Buggery or Sodomy with Man or Beast, he shall be punished with Death by the sentence of a Court-martial." But the other, Article 2, was always quoted first and taking precedence, identified the heart of the offence: "All Flag Officers, and all Persons in or belonging to his Majesty's Ships or Vessels of War, being guilty of profane Oaths, Cursings, Execrations, Drunkenness, Uncleanness, or other scandalous Actions, in Derogation of God's Honour, and Corruption of good Manners, shall incur such Punishment as a Court-martial shall think fit to impose, and as the Nature and Degree of their Offence shall deserve." 

Uncleanness, filthy language, bad manners, being out-of-control drunk and homosexuality were all part of what couldn't be allowed in the Navy because any of them would break open the system of good order on which ships relied. Each of those crimes was a crime against order, and the prevention of disorder was the essence of naval life.

It is difficult now to remember just how desperately anxious and explosive a place the ship-of-the-line was. On a first-rate like the Victory, there might be 850 men on board, in a space 60 yards long, 15 wide and 10 high.

At least half of them were there against their will and usually in conditions where dreadful physical discomfort and strain alternated only with mind-destroying boredom. Men would in all likelihood be forced to stay on board, even in their home ports, for years at a time. Up to a sixth of the Navy deserted or tried to desert every year. Severe floggings were a weekly occurrence and in the course of 1804, according to the evidence of Victory's log, some 380 dozen lashes were inflicted on the crew. 

Anyone in charge of such a unit, which was somewhere between a floating prison and a mobile fortress, could not, of course, countenance sex between the men. If you were to keep the ship and the fleets going as effective fighting machines, sex between men had to be eradicated as a method of management. Sex with women in ports was provided by shipping girls out in large numbers to the moored hulls, but, at sea, sex between men would have introduced, as it does to prison, complex and deeply disruptive power and dependency networks that a fighting ship could not afford. 

That is why the Navy is more like the zoo than it is like the Church. The only principle at stake is effectiveness and it is the nature of effectiveness that has now changed. There are no metaphysics here and, in the modern Navy, as in the zoo, happy creatures are what is needed. Modern fighting effectiveness is known to depend, crucially, on performing well in front of people whose respect you want to have.

Love, in other words, can win wars. In part, the new policy is simply the Navy responding to new legislation that protects gay people at work, and the new partnerships law that insists gay couples be treated as if they were married. But it is also a sign of sanity in the Navy, of looking at things with their heads screwed on the right way.
   


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## mo-litia (27 Feb 2005)

Whats's that old Village People song called again? ;D

As Dennis Leary said, go screw a watermelon if you want-just don't do it in front of me.

This advertising for gay recruits is more PC crap that causes more problems than it solves.   Why not advertise for straight Navy recruits? Oh wait, here's another one; how about White Entertainment Television to complement BET?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the British government should consider humanity as the only special interest group that they recruit from. (With limitations...see my thoughts on women in combat arms units in this thread. http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/27412.15.html)

Cheers.


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## Cloud Cover (27 Feb 2005)

In a perfect world, I suppose it wouldn't matter what anybody sticks their pecker into as long as they do their job and don't try and stick the thing in you. It won't be long before Canada has a similar recruiting drive .. it seems the police in Ontario are about to be forced into it.


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## big bad john (27 Feb 2005)

Any one who believes that the Services have been Gay free is very naive.  That being said, I think that advertising specificly for gays, blacks or any minority crosses the colour line.  In the Marines we are Green Lids!


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## jmacleod (5 Mar 2005)

The Gay RN - I read this, and could not help think of the words to that old Naval Anthem, "the
North Atlantic Squadron", often sung at wardrooms and messes, as well as mess decks in the
RCN, The RCNVR and the Canadian Navy - "the cabin boy, the cabin boy, the dirty little nipper,
stuffed his arse with broken glass and circumsized the skipper; away, away with fife and drum"
etc. Talk is that CFB HMCS Stadacona is going to host the first same-sex wedding in the Navy
- where are the Hearts of Oak?   Regards, MacLeod


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