Gays in the navy

WAVES at a shooting range, training to qualify as instructors on electrically-operated. Image courtesy of the American Veterans for Equal Rights.

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You are going off to the Army. I went to the Naval recruiting station, and I told them my story and asked if I could get into the Navy, even though I was drafted. When you go into the military, there is a form that you fill out. The very bottom question has to do with homosexuality.

“I did it for the uplift of humanity and the Navy”: FDR's Gay Sex-Entrapment Sting

So each man was supposed to make his own determination. And at one point FDR did contact an attorney to make sure that the men would be protected if they engaged in sex, same-sex acts. And the attorney suggested that they would be safe because they were engaging in so-called criminal behavior in order to catch criminals, and so that was okay.

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