The Gay & Lesbian Times wants to extend an offer to the U.S. military to utilize our publication in order to recruit gays and lesbians for military service. Most of you reading this right now are probably thinking “That’ll be the day,” but in the U.K. that day has arrived. The Pink Pages, a popular GLBT resource guide in the U.K., announced that in attempts to recruit gay and lesbian sailors, the British Navy might begin running advertisements.

The British Navy has teamed with Stonewall, a professional GLBT lobbying group in the U.K., to develop strategies for the recruitment and retention of gay and lesbian sailors. In an effort to curb prejudice and ensure gays and lesbians are granted rights to equal housing, benefits and pension, the British Navy has reached out to the same organization it has battled for years over issues surrounding gays in the military. In this initial phase of collaboration titled the Diversity Champions Programme, Stonewall will provide commanding Naval officers with the necessary information to best understand and support gay and lesbian staff.

The American military, conversely, prohibits discussion of sexual orientation altogether. This dirty-secret approach known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” only seems more ridiculous as countries such as Britain are holding sensitivity training to educate their military about our segment of the population.

Commander Tim Kingsbury, the Royal Navy’s diversity and equality policy officer, said the Navy’s top brass must understand the needs of gay and lesbian personnel and encourage them to be part of the mainstream.

“Commanding officers have a key role to play in creating a culture in which gay and lesbian personnel feel confident that they [can] work without being harassed or bullied because of their orientation,” he said.

Once scoffed at, most notably in Winston Churchill’s supposed dismissal of British Naval tradition as nothing but “rum, sodomy and lash,” the British Navy’s most recent move reflects not only its complete reversal in policy – in 2000, the government was forced by the European court of human rights to withdraw its ban on homosexuality in the military – but also a tried-and-true effort to transform the Navy’s longstanding anti-gay culture from within.

This, coupled with the Civil Partnership Act passed last November (which provides civil partners access to a wide range of rights and responsibilities similar to marriage, including employment and pension benefits, fatal accidents compensation and being treated as spouses for all tax purposes), gives gay and lesbian personnel in the armed forces free license to live together in family quarters provided their relationships are registered.

American forces may boast technological superiority, but the sum of these initiatives makes the British military, specifically the Navy, one of the most progressive in the world. President Bush could stand to learn something from his largest military ally.

Studies have shown the adoption of a more inclusive policy towards gays and lesbians since the 2000 ruling has had no detriment to the standard and cohesion of British military forces.

Geoffrey Bateman and Sameera Dalvi of the University of Southampton (U.K.) found through documented case studies that American service members interacted and worked successfully with openly gay personnel from foreign militaries. They also noted that when conflicts arose, they were “minor” and “resolved successfully.”

Five years after Britain lifted its ban on gays in the military, the United States still operates under the discriminatory shadow of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. At a time when the U.S. military is desperate for troops to fight in the war against terror, never would lifting the ban against gays and lesbians in the military make more sense than today.

As President Bush tours Europe selling America’s version of freedom, you can’t help but feel slightly (or extremely) embarrassed. Europe and Canada, among other nations, continue to show foresight on issues both political and social while the U.S. continues to lag behind, often caught up in debates such as the sexual preference of an animated sponge or whether a cartoon character having lesbian parents may corrupt America’s youth.