ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Twenty-nine graduates of the Naval Academy are working to establish an official gay and lesbian chapter of their alumni association, the first such request of any U.S. service academy.

San Francisco resident Jeff Petrie, a 1989 graduate of the Naval Academy, is organizing the effort and plans to file an application with the academy’s alumni association, he said.

The chapter’s members-to-be, none of whom still serve in the military, want to support gay midshipmen still bound by the Department of Defense’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” mandate, Petrie said.

The Naval Academy, he said, has fostered a “disapproving and damaging environment for gay and lesbian midshipmen for decades.”

“We don’t have the power to change that,” said Petrie, who calls his would-be chapter USNA Out. “But we do have the power to make things a little easier.”

Skid Heyworth, vice president of communications for the military college’s alumni association, said he hadn’t received the group’s application but would pass it to the association’s board of directors for review. He said he didn’t know of any similar request in the academy’s history.

“We’re not going to speculate on the ‘what-ifs’ at this point until we see the request,” Heyworth said.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the UC Santa Barbara, said it’s the first request for official recognition by gay and lesbian service academy graduates. There are several unofficial networks, often with anonymous members, around the country, he said.

“I’m impressed with what they’re trying to do,” Belkin said of the Naval Academy grads.

Gay and lesbian issues have become more mainstream in last few years in the military and civilian society.

“To a greater extent than ever, officers will say they’re not uncomfortable around gays and lesbians on a personal level,” Belkin said. “But there are still pockets of intense resistance to integration.”

Petrie said he’s been working since July to compile a roster of potential members, all of whom belong to the Service Academy Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association (SAGALA), a 150-member alumni association that isn’t officially sanctioned by any of the military academies. Many of its members are anonymous.

An official gay and lesbian chapter of the Naval Academy’s alumni association would take the next step, advertising its members and offering contact information, said John Sewell, a 1990 academy grad who has signed onto the roster.

“Being out would give the group a little more political say,” said Sewell, who now lives in Seattle after serving three years as a nuclear submarine officer in Norfolk, Va. “We know who the members are, and we’re not some hidden organization.”

While at the Naval Academy, Petrie said he heard anti-gay remarks regularly.

“I kept my secret. I lived a double life in exchange for the opportunity to serve,” he said.

USNA Out is organizing “in the hopes of doing good things for the Naval Academy Alumni Association,” Petrie said.

“Just by existing, I think we will be able to help current midshipmen by showing them we have been through it successfully, and if that’s what they want to do, they can do it too,” he said.

For Sewell, he doesn’t see any difference between his own former college and other universities around the country.

“If I had graduated from Harvard or Yale or Stanford, I would have an official chapter, so for me it’s ‘Why not?’” he said.