LGBT Veterans on 25th anniversary of military ban being lifted
2025-01-12
Category: news

Intrusive interrogations, the shame of dishonourable discharge, criminal convictions that impacted their lives for years.This is what many LGBT people who served their country were subjected to.That is, until 12 January 2000 - exactly 25 years ago today - when a long-standing ban on LGBT people serving in the military was lifted.Now, a quarter of a century later, the final design for a monument being erected in these veterans' honour has been revealed. 
The large-scale sculpture, designed by Norfolk-based artist collective Abraxas Academy, will stand in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire after it's unveiled later this year. It's a bronze model of a crumpled letter, made up of words taken from evidence given by LGBT personnel affected by the ban.Pte Carol Morgan, who was forced out of the Women's Royal Army Corps (WRAC) for being lesbian in 1982, says the design is "a fantastic piece of art"."It shows that we exist, when we've always existed... And now they acknowledge that we exist."A monument was one of 49 recommendations made by a landmark report from Lord Etherton, published in 2023, into the long-standing impact of the ban on LGBT veterans. The search for a design began last October - 38 designs were submitted, and five were shortlisted. The winning design was selected on Friday.
While the process of decriminalising homosexuality in the UK started in 1967, it was another 33 years before gay people were legally allowed to serve in the Army, Navy and RAF.Those who fought for the ban to be repealed tell the BBC that they could never have imagined that they'd one day see a monument in their honour.
'At war with the world around us'
When Lt Cdr Duncan Lustig-Prean was serving in the Navy, he became accustomed to hiding who he was from his colleagues. He used to practise saying "Phyllis", so he didn't accidentally say his partner's real name, Phil, after a few drinks. He and his boyfriend would never sign letters with their full names, just initials. He'd even periodically put up pictures of a woman on his wall - "an assumed girlfriend".And when going on lengthy deployments, his partner could never join his colleagues' loved ones to wave the ship off. At least, not in the open."The families would be there on the Round Tower in Portsmouth, waving us off," he recalls. "If I was lucky, my partner would appear, hidden on the sea wall in Southsea somewhere, discreetly waving as I departed for eight months."The secrecy was necessary - but hard."When you are lying to people who will die for you and you know that you will die for them - that bond is very close, and it is a very difficult and painful thing to lie about your whole existence."For Lt Cdr Craig Jones, who served in the Royal Navy for 19 years, being gay "didn't become too much of a problem - until I found something that I needed to hide. Almost 30 years ago, I met my then-boyfriend, now-husband".
He met Adam while on leave, after finding the courage to go to a gay bar for the first time - and at that moment, he says, "life turned from monochrome to technicolour".The couple moved to Brighton together and "effectively hid" there, he says. They were "a couple, in many ways, at war with the world around us".He took similar measures to try and protect himself. He'd lie to colleagues about where he was spending his weekends, and change the names of his gay friends in his Filofax - George and John became George and Joan, for example. Meanwhile, his Brighton friends didn't know he was in the Navy; to explain his long absences, he told them he worked on an oil tanker in the Gulf."I remember one of my Commanding Officers writing in a confidential report about me in '96: 'Jones is an intensely private man.' And I was an intensely private man, because the consequences of not being private were extremely severe," he says."I saw so many of my amazing colleagues marched down the gangway of the ships in which I served, by the Military Police, to what was then a fate unknown - and to what I now know to have been a dreadful fate."Lt Cdr Jones is referring to the horrors that faced many military personnel after they were suspected of being gay. Some were sexually assaulted during interrogations, some were imprisoned and some even took their own lives.
Pte Morgan tried to be careful when she fell in love with another woman in the Women's Royal Army Corps. They'd avoid ever being seen on their own together, and although they'd write each other love letters, they'd sign-off with male names instead of their own.Despite going to these lengths, she was still reported to a superior.What followed was a probing investigation, which included having all of her letters and photographs seized, being repeatedly asked intimate questions, and being referred to a male psychiatrist for further intrusive questioning. Eventually Pte Morgan "just broke down and cried, and admitted I was gay".She was dismissed from the Army in 1982 after four years of service – carrying with her not just the loss of her career, but intense feelings of worthlessness and shame in who she was. She bore the weight of these emotions for decades."I went and hid in the closet for 35 years," she says. "I literally couldn't come to terms with the fact I was gay."
Blackmailed by a stranger
It was January 1994, 15 years into his Naval career, when Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean was blackmailed by a man he didn't know, but who had somehow found out he was gay.He told the man to "eff off", and that he was going to go to the military police himself to report the conversation."I made an appointment first thing on Monday morning with the head of the Special Investigation Branch," Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean says. The Special Investigation Branch (SIB) was made up of the military police forces from the Army, the Navy and the RAF. "He had been my subordinate in my previous job and I knew him well."The SIB head gave him a warm, friendly reception, ushering him into a room where there was fresh coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits laid out on the table.When Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean confided that he was being blackmailed, the SIB head was outraged on his behalf: "Give me the so-and-so's name and I'll sort it out for you. Why is he trying to blackmail you?"Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean told him the truth - that it was because he was gay."At this point, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife," he says.The SIB head moved the coffee and biscuits to one side, and told him matter-of-factly that he was not obliged to say anything, but anything he did say could be taken down and given in evidence."He pushed me towards a police interview room, with somebody else in the room as well, to interrogate me about my private and sexual life," Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean says."It was the sort of interrogation I would expect if I were accused of rape. They were asking probing questions about my private and sexual life in the most gross detail you can imagine."He was suspended, and later discharged.
After the ban
In January 2000, Lt Cdr Jones was his ship's signal communications officer. This meant that when a signal came in announcing that the ban on LGBT personnel had been lifted, it was his job to tell his commanding officer."He said to me that, having read the signal, he was disappointed that he and others would have to serve with people who were, effectively, people like me," he says."My response was quite simple - that I was one of those people."This was the first time he had come out to his colleagues. Because the ban had been repealed, his job was safe - but the culture within his unit remained hostile. Some people refused to go into the shower area if he was in there, and some even stopped speaking to him.But two weeks after the ban was lifted, Lt Cdr Jones went to a Burns Night event with his unit - with his partner Adam on his arm."That was a night to be remembered with some remarkable anxieties, but we all survived."
The ban was repealed after a hard-fought political and legal campaign by a group of veterans called the Rank Outsiders. In recent years, Fighting With Pride has followed in their footsteps, campaigning for both recognition and reparations.Now, they've achieved not just the monument, but the promise of up to £70,000 compensation each, and a public apology from then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, delivered on behalf of the nation in July 2023."I didn't think this day would ever come, even with the campaign," Pte Morgan says. "I've spoken to some of the serving personnel today, and they live a life that we could never live."For Lt Cdr Lustig-Prean, seeing the monument will be "an intensely emotional experience - not just because we never expected to get this far, but also because for anyone who serves, remembrance of those who gave their lives is profoundly important to us."That's one of the reasons why I really want to go and see that memorial and contemplate the LGBTQ people who died for this country, as well as those who gave their careers because of this policy."Lt Cdr Jones agrees, and says the campaign has "restored [LGBT veterans] from what they felt was a position of shame to being recognised as incredible heroes of the Armed Forces."In the traditions of the Royal Navy, I'll raise a glass of Port and be glad to see the battle behind me."