Looking and Acting the Part: Gays in the Armed Forces — A Case of Passing Masculinity

This paper focuses on the exclusion of homosexuals from serving in the British Armed Forces. It is primarily an analysis of various official documents and their implications relating to this exclusion policy; in particular, the 1996 House of Commons Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill Report 2 and the Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) internal review in the form of the 1996 Report of the Homosexuality Policy Assessment Team (HPAT). 3 These two documents are crucial to this paper since the evidence collated within the HPAT Report was quoted as being the 'decisive factor in the decision by the 1996 House of Commons Select Committee for retaining the ban on homosexuals in the Armed Forces. I also briefly refer to the 1995 Judicial Review4 and subsequent 1996 Appeal S trials, as a means of illustrating certain points.