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Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition

United Kingdom Lifts Ban on Gays and Lesbians in the Military

by Caryn E. Neumann

Date: January 12, 2000

Locale: United Kingdom

Categories: Military; civil rights; government and politics; laws, acts, and legal history

Key Figures

John Beckett weapons engineering mechanic in the Royal Navy

Graeme Grady personnel administrator in the Royal Air Force

Duncan Lustig-Prean lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy

Jeanette Smith nurse in the Royal Air Force

Summary of Event

Until the year 2000, the United Kingdom had a longstanding policy of subjecting gays and lesbians in its military branches to intrusive investigations and dishonorable discharges. The policy had continued after the 1967 repeal of the Labouchere Amendment, which had criminalized all sexual contact among civilian men in Britain. Homosexual acts by servicemen remained criminal acts in civil law until 1994, when the acts were covered as offenses under military law punishable by immediate dismissal.

While other Western European nations abandoned bans on gays and lesbians in their armed forces, Britain continued to expel homosexual military personnel. Between 1989 and 1998, Britain discharged thirty-three officers and more than five hundred enlisted service members for homosexuality. Many of those discharged had good service records and had caused no disruption to their colleagues. The Ministry of Defence defended these discharges on the grounds that the presence of out gay troops would hurt morale and discipline—an argument used by the U.S. armed forces as well—among the 210,000 British uniformed personnel. Defence argued that surveys indicated that 95 percent of the troops were reluctant to serve with gays and lesbians. Opponents of the ban pointed out that because military policy was typically not decided on democratic grounds, the opinion of the troops should not hold any weight on the matter. Additionally, since most other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries had a lenient attitude toward gay and lesbian service personnel, British soldiers on multinational peacekeeping operations worked without problems alongside gays (and, sometimes, lesbians) in such places as Kosovo.

“Homosexuality and the Armed Forces,” U.K. Ministry of Defence

Details of the Policy on Sexual Conduct in the Armed Forces and the Armed Forces Code of Social Conduct.

. . . The Code of Social Conduct firmly recognises the right to privacy, including sexual orientation. Accordingly the new policy lifting the ban on homosexuals, and firmly underpinned by the Code of Social Conduct, was considered the most appropriate solution for the UK Armed Forces.

The”Armed Forces Code of Social Conduct” sets out a policy based on behaviour and whether an individual’s conduct may impact adversely on the cohesion, efficiency or operational effectiveness of the Service. In setting out this policy, no account or distinction is made on the basis of the individual’s gender or sexual orientation, which is taken to be a private matter for the individual. The Code of Social Conduct is based on an assessment of the potential or actual impact of social conduct on operational effectiveness and, as a start point, operates on the principle that the Services will only interfere in an individual’s private life where the actions or behaviour of an individual have adversely impacted, or are they likely to impact, on the efficiency or operational effectiveness of the Service. It therefore recognises an individuals right to a private life in line with the intent of Article 8 of the HRA [Human Rights Act].

To summarise, the policy to bar homosexuals from the Armed Forces was not legally sustainable and has now been replaced with a new policy which recognises sexual orientation as a private matter. It was formulated with the full consultation and support of the three Service Chiefs and is firmly underpinned by a code of social conduct that applies to all regardless of their sexual orientation.

On June 7, 1995, Britain’s High Court found that the no-gays rule was unjustified and inhumane but stopped short of changing it. On September 27, 1999, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled in favor of four gay military personnel who had been dismissed from the British military in the mid-1990’s because of their homosexuality. The plaintiffs were John Beckett and Duncan Lustig-Prean, formerly of the Royal Navy; and Jeanette Smith and Graeme Grady, formerly of the Royal Air Force. After unsuccessful judicial review proceedings in British courts, in which they invoked English administrative law and European Union gender-discrimination law, the four applicants took their cases to the court of human rights. The court held that the dismissals violated European human rights treaties, specifically the right of the plaintiffs to privacy as stated by Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights. With its decision, the court became the first final appellate court in the world to invalidate a ban on lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel under a human rights treaty or constitution.

The verdict could not force Britain to change its laws. However, Britain was a signatory to the 1950 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. As such, it obliged itself to abide by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. Accordingly, the Ministry of Defence immediately suspended discharges of homosexuals despite protests from senior officers.

On January 12, 2000, the British government announced that sexual orientation would no longer be relevant in military recruitment, assignment, promotion, and disciplinary decisions. The Ministry of Defence replaced the ban on gays and lesbians with a code of conduct that applies to all service members, whether homosexual or heterosexual. Military personnel experts had decided that it would be impractical to try to write specific rules on various types of sexual conduct. Instead, the military implemented a more general service test that makes no reference to sexuality. The new guidelines permitted commanders to respond to inappropriate conduct such as sexual relations between commanders and subordinates or overt displays of affection that might offend others. The code gives commanders the right and the obligation to intervene in the personal lives of subordinates if there is an overriding operational need to do so to sustain team cohesion and maintain trust. Also, military authorities reinstated personnel discharged under the previous policy barring gays and lesbians.

Most observers regarded the end of the ban as inevitable. The Labour Party government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had fostered a socially progressive climate conducive to change. Blair had scheduled a vote in Parliament on the question of gays and lesbians in the military as part of the review of the Armed Services Bill. In a nation increasingly tolerant of homosexuality, it was no longer deemed socially or politically acceptable to denigrate or dismiss gays and lesbians. Many of the conservative military officials who had backed the ban had retired. The new leaders were unwilling to copy the U.S. government’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy because they believed that it had failed. The government, the public, and the military were ready for a change in policy.

When the British government ended the ban, the announcement attracted relatively little news coverage. Many citizens appeared indifferent. Most of the attention came from organizations such as Rank Outsiders, a group for gays and lesbians who were serving or had served in the British military. Gay organizations expected that gays would now be able to serve with dignity and respect, but gay and lesbian service members were concerned a backlash could result if gays and lesbians came out of the closet. In subsequent years, no backlash has been evident.

Significance

The change in British policy leaves Turkey as the only member of the NATO defense coalition that bans gays and lesbians from military service. The Netherlands became the first nation to end its ban on gays in the military in 1972, and nearly every other Western nation followed the lead of the Dutch, with the U.S. ending its ban of lesbian and gay service members with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 2010.

At the time that the British ban was ended, continued resistance on the part of the U.S. military to ending its discriminatory policy was based on the argument that out gays and lesbians would negatively affect unit cohesion and discipline. Some commanders at the time also still feared that heterosexual soldiers would have difficulty existing in close proximity with people who are gay and that violence would result, but those fears proved to be unfounded

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Neumann, Caryn E. "United Kingdom Lifts Ban On Gays And Lesbians In The Military." Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=LGBTQ2E_0269.

APA 7th

Neumann, C. E. (2017). United Kingdom Lifts Ban on Gays and Lesbians in the Military. In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Neumann, Caryn E. "United Kingdom Lifts Ban On Gays And Lesbians In The Military." Edited by Robert C. Evans. Great Events from History: LGBTQ, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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