Latest Step Toward Full Equality for Gays in Britain

Date: June 15, 2008
Press Contact: Indra Lusero, Assistant Director , Palm Center University of California, Santa Barbara 805-893-5664; Lusero@palmcenter.ucsb.edu

SANTA BARBARA, CA, June 15, 2008 - The British Ministry of Defence has
announced that for the first time, the Army will allow its soldiers to
participate in London's Gay Pride parade on July 5 in uniform. The move
ends a ban on British Army personnel wearing their uniforms in the parade,
and brings the Army into line with the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, which
both allow service members to march in uniform. Britain lifted its
longstanding ban on gays in the military in 2000 after a European court
decision on the matter.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center at University of California, Santa
Barbara, said the change marks a reversal in the Army's reluctance to
embrace the spirit, and not just the letter of the law allowing gays and
lesbians to serve openly. "Our research has found that when Britain lifted
its ban, there was no decrease in readiness or unit cohesion. That said,
the Army has lagged behind the Navy and Air Force in creating a culture of
inclusion" said Belkin, also a political science professor at the
university.

Twenty-four nations now let gays serve openly in the military. The Palm
Center, a think tank that studies gay service, released several studies on
the experiences of foreign nations that lifted their gay bans, and on the
relevance of those experiences to the U.S. The Palm studies, along with
numerous internal reports by those nations' militaries and by other
independent government and academic studies, have uniformly found that
openly gay service does not harm military readiness, and that the transition
to a policy of equal treatment is most effective when supported by top
leaders in the institution.

Palm Center senior research fellow, Nathaniel Frank, will publish a book on
gays in the military in early 2009 that chronicles the detailed history of
several nations whose militaries ended discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation. In the book, "Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the
Military and Weakens America" (St. Martin's Press), Frank assesses a wealth
of research on foreign militaries and American analogous institutions,
including the Palm studies. He concludes that, "despite fears that gays
could turn fighting forces into gay pride floats, the majority of gays
serving in foreign militaries and American police and fire departments
conform to expected norms of their organization."

For the Center's previous research on gays in the British military, see
http://www.palmcenter.org/files/active/0/Britain1.pdf,
http://www.palmcenter.org/files/active/0/200412_Dalvi-study.pdf, and
http://www.palmcenter.org/files/active/0/2004_02_BatemanSameera.pdf

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The Palm Center is a research institute at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. The Center uses rigorous social science to inform public
discussions of controversial social issues, enabling policy outcomes to be
informed more by evidence than by emotion. Its data-driven approach is
premised on the notion that the public makes wise choices on social issues
when high-quality information is available. For more information, visit
www.palmcenter.ucsb.edu.