|
Gay British
sailors Lieutenant Rolf Kurth
(left) and Lieutenant Commander Craig A.
Jones spoke in Washington this week on
the issue of gays serving openly in the military.
(Photo by Leigh Mosley)
Malaysian
official says U.N. ill-advised on gay measure
advertisement
|
By JOE CREA
Friday, February 13,
2004
Two gay British sailors spoke in Washington this week
to buttress claims made in a new study that openly gay
soldiers who served in multinational units with American
forces in Iraq did not harm unit cohesion.
Lt. Rolf Kurth and Lt. Cmdr. Craig A. Jones, both of
the British Royal Navy, served alongside American troops
in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and shared their experiences
in the British armed services and what military life is
like where they were allowed to be open about their
sexual orientation. The U.K. armed forces have allowed
gays to serve openly since 2000.
Jones, 34, of Brighton, England, said he became aware
of the policy change when he was an operations officer
aboard HMS Fearless in 2000. He said the announcement
released him “from the wearying requirement to guard the
detail of my life for fear of repercussion.
“But amidst this feeling of release I was presented
with the dilemma of how to react,” Jones said. “For me,
secrecy and a lack of openness goes against the grain of
the enduring friendships we enjoy in service life, and I
had never been comfortable with maintaining economy of
truth.”
Kurth, 37, of London, who served as an openly gay
officer in joint operations with U.S. forces in
Operation Iraqi Freedom, said the policy change was a
“resounding non-event” and added that the integration of
gay men and lesbians in the U.K. armed services has been
“a remarkable success.”
“I can’t help but think that many of our most senior
officers will look back and wonder why so much time,
effort and legal expense was committed to the case
against lifting the ban,” Kurth said.
Both men described the cantankerous
debates between gay activists and senior military
commanders prior to the lifting of the ban in 2000.
“Let me say from the outset that this policy has been
a total success, implemented within stride, bringing
considerable benefits to our team, not least by
recruiting and retaining the highest quality of
personnel available in an increasingly competitive
employment market,” Jones said. “This was a policy born
in a storm and implemented by obligation rather than
because it had been commonly accepted in the highest
echelons of the U.K. military.”
The European Court of Human Rights settled the matter
of gays serving openly in the U.K. armed forces on Jan.
12, 2000.
Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for
the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, released a
study, “Multinational military units and homosexual
personnel,” that concluded openly gay soldiers did not
compromise unit cohesion during Operation Iraqi
Freedom.
“We found through academic investigation and analysis
that the presence of acknowledged gay service members
clearly has not compromised unit cohesion or operational
effectiveness among U.S. military personnel,” Belkin
said. “In fact, all of our evidence comes from
situations where the U.S. military ordered American
units to serve with these openly gay allied soldiers and
officers in multinational units, such as those recently
deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Authored by CSSMM’s assistant director Geoffrey
Bateman and Sameera Dalvi of the University of
Southampton (U.K.), the study found through documented
case studies, American service members interacted and
worked successfully with openly gay personnel from
foreign militaries. They also note that when conflicts
arose, they were “minor” and “resolved
successfully.”
Both men noted that by speaking about the policies of
the U.K. armed services, neither was representing the
U.K. government or the Royal Navy. And the sailors were
unwilling to make any comment or judgment regarding the
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the U.S. military. But
Jones said that there were “no issues” between he and
his American colleagues and Kurth echoed Jones’
sentiment calling his sexual orientation a
“non-event.”
When Jones came out in 2000, he said “reactions were
individual, some were immediately supportive” and others
“were very unsure of how to react.”
“Over the 18 months that followed the issue of my
sexuality was ever-present, not because of any incident
or event, but because people take time to adjust, it was
a process of education at the pace that each individual
found comfortable,” Jones said.
Kurth described his “coming out” experience as a
painful one. At the time, he was a senior naval officer
in Hong Kong in 1997 where he was second in command of a
ship. He was discharged within 24 hours but readmitted
to the Royal Navy three years ago. He described his
original dismissal as “history” noting that he would not
“want to trawl through the gallons of spilt milk.”
“The important point in this story is that I am now
sitting before you once gain in uniform,” Kurth said.
“On a personal note, since the overturn of the ban on
gay men and women serving, I have rejoined the Navy.
“Although only one man, when the navy discharged me,
they lost a man in whom they had invested seven years of
expensive training from a branch seriously short of
people of my seniority. Think of the significant
contribution that all the other gay men and women who
were discharged from the armed forces could have made,
had they not been discharged.”
| 
