Gay in the Navy: openly gay troops who fought in the Iraqi war say they were accepted in their units. They wonder why the U.S. still has "don't ask, don't tell".

In February 2003 openly gay Royal Navy lieutenant Rolf Kurth, 37, was in the Persian Gulf helping the international coalition of forces invade Iraq. In February 2004 the British man accepted a vastly different but no less stressful mission to Washington, D.C.: convincing lawmakers that openly gay men and women should be able to serve in the U.S. armed forces.

Kurth arrived in the nation's capital accompanied by Royal Navy lieutenant commander Craig A. Jones and Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military. The men met with congressional staff and addressed an audience at the National Defense University. Belkin shared his center's research; Kurth and Jones shared their experiences of serving in the Royal Navy, out and proud, alongside U.S. troops.

The United Kingdom lifted its ban on gay military service members in January 2000 after pressure from the European Court of Human Rights. "Changing the British policy changed lives, and it changed the environment we lived in," Kurth says.

It's been a little more than a decade since the Pentagon implemented its infamous "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which in theory allows gay military personnel to serve but forbids them to come out. In 2002 the Defense Department discharged 906 service members under the policy, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The experience with U.K. forces proves that the Pentagon's rationale for "don't ask" is akin to a old-time traveling salesman's pitch for "snake oil," says Belkin. The center's "Multinational Military Units and Homosexual Personnel" study analyzed multinational military coalitions and the relationships between American and gay British, Dutch, Australian, and Canadian troops. "There was no compromise of any unit's ability to achieve its mission," Belkin says.

Jones, who joined the Royal Navy in 1989, tins served in counterdrug operations and been assigned to posts from the Atlantic to the Adriatic as well as in security operations in the Persian Gulf with U.S. troops.

For more than a decade he served in silence, hiding his relationship with his partner, psychologist Adam Mason, because of the U.K ban. "If I hadn't been successful in keeping it a secret, I would have been dismissed," he says, recalling long periods at sea when he carried on stilted, coded conversations with Mason in monitored ship communications.

That changed when the United Kingdom lifted the ban. Jones came out to his shipmates, whose wives welcomed Mason as a military spouse. "Before, I never felt comfortable. My partner was isolated," Jones says. "But that's no more. We were at a Buckingham Palace royal garden party, which is a remarkable change--to go from hiding in the corner to tea and cucumber sandwiches on the lawns of Buckingham Palace."

Life changed for Kurth as well after the ban was lifted. In 1997 he came out as gay and was discharged. "I was on a small warship in Hong Kong. It was a bit of a goldfish bowl, the life," he says of the closet at sea. "I got to a point where I started to feel the moral pressure to come out. I did, and within 24 hours I was back in London."

In May 2001, with the ban gone, Kurth reenlisted. "It was a career that I loved--the camaraderie, the time at sea, the military ethos, the way we do our business," he says. After graduating at the top of his class from a principal warfare officers' course, he assumed a post on HMS Ocean, the Royal Navy's largest amphibious assault ship.

During the invasion of Iraq, Kurth was in charge of ship communications, electronic warfare, and intelligence. He currently serves as the ship's operations officer. "A ship at sea becomes a little community--and [has] all the challenges of close quarters," he said. "You get to know people very well, and you have to learn a lot of tolerance for others.... It was widely known that I was gay. We all got on very well."

Neff is managing editor of the Chicago Free Press.