Eight months after Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal took effect, the first openly gay cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduated this week. 

President Obama gave the commencement address at the graduation in Colorado Springs, Colorado on Wednesday. Officials from the Blue Alliance, an LGBT Air Force Academy alumni group, said there were at least four openly LGBT people in this year’s graduating class.

“We can say with confidence and pride: The United States is stronger, safer and more respected in the world,” Obama said. “There’s a new feeling about America. I see it everywhere I go, from London and Prague, to Tokyo and Seoul, to Rio and Jakarta. There’s a new confidence in our leadership.”

So exciting! Congratulations to them. 

The death of a Marine by stabbing last month has been ruled a hate crime, according to the case’s lead prosecutor. 

Michael Poth stabbed Philip M. Bushong on Capitol Hill’s Barracks Row after yelling an anti-gay slur. He had just seen Bushong hug a gay male friend, though Bushong himself was straight. Poth and Bushong are both U.S. Marines.

Poth was charged with second-degree murder while armed. After reviewing video footage of the incident, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman has also ruled it a hate crime. Poth will stay in jail on the murder charge.

So, so sad. We have a lot of work to do. 

When a U.S. Marine returned to San Diego’s Camp Pendleton this week, his boyfriend, a Navy veteran, dropped to one knee and asked to marry him. Sources seem to think it’s the first marriage proposal between two men to take place on a U.S. military base. More.

About damn time.

In Turkey, being gay means you don’t have to join the military. But proving you’re gay is an ordeal, and often a humiliating one.

This BBC story talks about the personal experiences of men who had to go to great lengths to prove to Turkish officials that they were, in fact, gay, and therefore couldn’t serve in the armed forces. They were asked questions about whether they dressed as women and had anal sex, and they had to present photos of themselves kissing or even having sex with men. Doctors are even pressured to “diagnose” homosexuality, which is obviously not possible.

The Turkish army refused BBC requests for an interview, but a retired general, Armagan Kuloglu, agreed to comment.

Openly gay men in the army would cause “disciplinary problems”, he says, and would be impractical creating the need for “separate facilities, separate dormitories, showers, training areas”.

He says that if a gay man keeps his sexuality secret, he can serve - an echo of the US military’s recently dropped Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

“But when someone comes out and says he is gay, then the army needs to make sure that he is truly gay, and not simply lying to evade his mandatory duty to serve in the military.”

This is so jarring on so many levels. In the United States, we fought for years for DADT to be repealed so service members would not be discharged for being openly gay. But in Turkey, homosexuality is used as an excuse to get out of service, and so officials are cracking down to make sure nobody’s faking, and doing so in extremely invasive ways. It’s mind-boggling.

This story is short and easy to read, but jam-packed with really provocative information that will make you think. Give it a read; it’s worth your time.

(Thanks for the story tip, essiesh!)

The oldest private military academy in the country is finally holding its first-ever gay pride week, six months after the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy has expired, starting today.

Norwich University’s gay-straight alliance club held its first meeting in September within hours of the end of DADT. The organization is now planning a gay pride week entailing six days of events at the Vermont school - one day for each color of the LGBT flag - which will feature lectures and presentations on topics from bullying to HIV. 

The week will culminate in the university’s first queer prom and alumni will likely come back to visit and join the festivities. 

Times have changed, said Norwich Vice President Michael Kelley, a 1974 Norwich graduate who spent 27 years in the military before returning to Norwich. The school was also among the first to admit women to its Corps of Cadets.

“It’s saying that we as a military community are looking to more to the future, that we’re not quibbling about the past, what was or what wasn’t, that we can take a leadership role to help move our students to a more enlightened future,” Kelley said.

Great for them. I hope more schools catch on; this is a brilliant way to embrace the changing times. 

Opinions were mixed about what would happen when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed. Some said service members would have a difficult time adjusting; others said the change would be welcomed with open arms.

Apparently neither is true, according to results from a new Military Times Poll. 25 active duty service members noted that they were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and only one came out after the DADT repeal; the others were either already out or kept their orientations hidden. More numbers:

In the 2011 Military Times Poll, 59 percent of active-duty respondents said they did not believe they would be affected by the repeal. When service members were asked this year how they were affected after the repeal, 69 percent said they had felt no impact.

Although units where someone disclosed they are gay, lesbian or bisexual after repeal felt more of a change, 59 percent still said the repeal had no noticeable effect.

In addition, although 10 percent of 2011 respondents said they would be less likely to remain in military housing after DADT repeal, just 2 percent said this year that they moved.

This is so interesting to me considering the extent of resources that was dedicated to figuring out how repeal would affect the troops. Not sure if I’m disappointed or not that so few people have come out since repeal, but I’m sure they know what they are doing. Interesting stuff.

Brandon Morgan, the Marine in this photo, says of its viral popularity:

To everyone who has responded in a positive way. My partner and I want to say thank you. Dalan, the giant in the photo, can’t believe how many shares and likes we have gotten on this. We didn’t do this to get famous,or something like that we did this cause after 3 deployments and four years knowing each other, we finally told each other how we felt. As for the haters, let em hate…to quote Kat Williams, everyone needs haters, so let them hate. We are the happiest we have ever been and as for the whole PDA and kissing slash hugging in uniform…it was a homecoming, if the Sergeants Major, Captains, Majors, and Colonels around us didn’t care…then why do you care what these random people have to say?

Perfection. More. 

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced it will no longer defend laws that keep same-sex spouses of service members from getting the same benefits as straight married couples.

There is no reason to treat these laws any differently than the Defense of Marriage Act, which Holder’s department is also no longer defending, he said in a letter to Congress today. Military-specific sections of the U.S. Code that exclude same-sex partners from the definition of spouse, “as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violate the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, Holder wrote in the letter, posted online by Talking Points Memo. 

Such an important stance to take. 

The newest issue of OutServe, a magazine by and for LGBT members of the armed forces, includes substantial coverage of transgender service members.

The Metro Weekly article linked above includes a pretty long interview with one of the subjects of the main story - Bryan, a self-identified trans man who serves in the military - and explains from a very personal level the challenges of being trans* in the military. 

Though Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been repealed and LGB people can now serve openly, there still exist a number of complications for trans* people. From the story:

Transgender service is not allowed, Bryan says, for two reasons. ”You can’t be transgender and in the military because it’s considered a medical disqualification on the basis of the hormones and the surgery. They just assume trans people have ‘the surgery.’ And then, there’s a psychological disqualification because they see it as having gender identity disorder.

“Even if you haven’t been formally diagnosed with gender identity disorder, if they find out that you’re cross-dressing or that you identify as trans in any way, they can discharge you under the basis of gender identity disorder.”

OutServe is only available in print in a few select places, but its website is a wealth of information. This publication is doing great work highlighting places where we’ve made progress, but we still have a long, long way to go.