ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – After a year of preparation, a group of former Naval Academy midshipmen announced on Veterans Day they will try again to establish the first official gay and lesbian alumni chapter of any U.S. service academy.

Leaders of the would-be chapter say they’ve resolved objections raised by the Naval Academy Alumni Association last December, when the panel rejected the chapter’s application to be officially recognized. The group, now with 66 members, tweaked its bylaws to clarify they don’t exclude straight graduates.

And they established a geographic base – Castro, the predominantly gay section of San Francisco. The military college’s alumni association emphasized that new chapters have to be “geographic in nature,” the association’s spokesperson said last year. It’s not the group’s sexuality that the association objects to, officials said.

The group ditched its tag of USNA Out and renamed itself Castro Chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association.

“Now that we’ve transformed ourselves into a chapter that meets the criteria, we get to put to the test the statement they made last year when they said our sexuality was never taken into consideration,” said Jeff Petrie, a 1989 Naval Academy graduate who organized the chapter. He lives in Castro and is president of the group, which has continued to function as an unofficial chapter over the past year.

Skid Heyworth, vice president of communications for the military college’s alumni association, said trustees may consider the application at their meeting next month.

He emphasized again that the chapter’s main stumbling block has been its lack of a geographic base, but he declined to comment on the likelihood that the association would sanctify the gay chapter.

“The issue primarily for us was one of geography,” Heyworth said.

Zoe Dunning, a 1985 graduate and vice president of the chapter, said she’s not optimistic that her group will land official recognition. The alumni association’s unspoken rules are anti-gay and lesbian, she said.

“There can really be no other excuse,” for rejection, said Dunning, 41, who lives in San Francisco just outside the Castro district. “We’ve met all their requirements.”

The Naval Academy’s acceptance of openly gay midshipmen – even those no longer on campus or serving in the military – doesn’t seem likely, said Aaron Belkin, associate professor and director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“My own personal interpretation was their resistance last year was not really about rules and procedures but was about their own discomfort with gays in the military,” Belkin said. “Will the Naval Academy Alumni Association move into the 21st century? I don’t know.”

Besides geography, the alumni association said last year it rejected USNA Out’s application because it focused on serving a discrete group of graduates, unlike other chapters, and that it served a special interest.

The chapter has since inducted one straight member and welcomes others, Petrie said.

“We’ve made it even more clear that we’re not exclusive. We’ve made our bylaws even more identical to those of other chapters,” said Petrie, who also serves as secretary of San Francisco’s other group of former midshipmen – the officially sanctioned, 300-member chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association.

Although Petrie is active in the larger San Francisco chapter, he says he and other gay alumni feel more at home in a group that welcomes and is run by openly gay members.

“That’ll be something new, because many of us feel that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ carries over to alumni chapters,” said Petrie, referring to the Department of Defense’s mandate for gay service members.