Royal Air Force - News & Updates

April 2011 marks the 93rd anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force. By anyone’s reckoning that makes the RAF a pretty venerable institution, and one thing venerable institutions tend not to do very well is change. Yet the Air Force seems to have done just that when it comes to the issue of LGBT servicemen and -women.

Like the rest of the Armed Forces, the RAF used to ban gay and lesbian people from serving openly, until a change in policy in 2000 prompted by a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. Nearly 11 years later, the Royal Air Force has been named one of Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers 2011; a rapid and thorough turnaround that may hold lessons for other countries as they go through the convulsions of LGBT integration.

However, it’s an improvement of which not everyone is aware, according to some gay and lesbian personnel with whom So So Gay recently spoke to get an inside view. ‘I think it is still somewhat felt that the military is still anti-gay,’ sighs Corporal Tony Butchart-Kelly. He says he still gets asked if he needs to be in the closet or if he gets beaten up (he doesn’t, on both counts). ‘There are still people out there who think it’s illegal!’ agrees Corporal Mike Taylor. ‘After 11 years I think that’s quite something.’ Clearly, it can be hard work to wear down conventional wisdom around military institutions. ‘I hate the fact the Air Force is still seen by some as totally male-dominated, homophobic and racist,’ laments Butchart-Kelly, ‘when actually it’s none of those things anymore.’

Of course, LGBT people served in the RAF before the ban was lifted, if not openly. Flight Sergeant Sarah Cotman isn’t alone in telling us she ‘didn’t give it very much thought’ when she joined up. ‘The job was the most important thing,’ she explains. Cpl Taylor is similarly pragmatic: ‘I did get asked the question about what I would do if I found out if someone else was gay,’ he relates. Could he have imagined himself enforcing such a policy? ‘I had to tow the party line on the answer,’ he admits, ‘but it’s not one on which I could have followed through very easily.’ Experiences of the ban’s lifting seem to have differed: Taylor remembers some people getting ‘really upset and worried about it,’ but Cotman recalls that while other sections of the RAF might have had difficulties, hers – nursing – had not been especially homophobic in the first place. ‘I genuinely don’t think there was a big shift in attitude,’ she says, ‘because I don’t think it was required.’

Even many of those who’ve joined since the ban was lifted will admit they weren’t quite sure what to expect. ‘I knew the Air Force wasn’t going to be completely homophobic,’ Cpl Butchart-Kelly elaborates, ‘but it was still with some trepidation that I joined up. Obviously only four years previously you could be kicked out, so it has to go through your mind: “Hmm, this could be scary”.’ Eleven years on, there is some small legacy of the ban still in place among several of the older personnel who, as Flt Sgt Cotman describes it, ‘were around in the days when they were expected to report homosexuals and remove them from Service.’ The difference in attitude is benign and to be expected, she shrugs: ‘They spent the whole of the first half of their careers being told one thing and now they’ve been told something else, and opinions are formed quite early on, aren’t they?’ Of course, in that sense the RAF is just experiencing the same cultural shift on LGBT issues seen across the country. Our interviewees all agreed that the younger recruits, many of whom have grown up knowing gay people, are ‘much more of a “be and let be” sort of generation,’ and any concerns they’d had before joining proved unwarranted.

Another preconception under which the Air Force – like the rest of the military – labours is the notion that it is a butch, macho environment. Cpl Butchart-Kelly admits that before he learned otherwise, he had assumed ‘you had to be a six-foot-tall, built-like-a-brick-shithouse He-Man.’ It’s a stereotype that hurts doubly: deterring some LGBT people from joining and, to some, seemingly incompatible with the gay community’s own persistent negative stereotypes. Our interviewees are adamant that such a picture of the RAF is wrong, and their own work – one a nurse, one an engineer responsible for looking after a fleet of Merlin helicopters, and one a paramedic who flies to the front line to pick up injured soldiers – give the lie to any idea that gay and lesbian Service people are any less capable of handling intense jobs.

Flight Lieutenant Greg Coles believes that, theoretically, ‘one of the hardest environments’ in the RAF for LGBT people would be his own: engineering. He explains that – civilian or military – it’s typically a field in which you find ‘those sort of people: guys who don’t get it or don’t like it or are very homophobic.’ In his Air Force experience, however, things have been fine. ‘There were one or two characters,’ he recalls, ‘but I think you get that in any organization.’ Coles also points out the different challenges faced by officers. ‘There’s always pressure that it might be slightly harder,’ he says. ‘I think where a lot of fears come from for people in command roles is you are the boss: there’s always that concern of how people perceive you. How do they work for you? Do their attitudes change when they find out that, actually, no, you haven’t got a girlfriend, you’ve got a boyfriend, and you bring your partner along to a function?’ Again, though, in his own experience ‘there have been no issues.’

Everyone we speak to stresses the lack of difficulties they’ve faced over their sexuality. It quickly becomes apparent that this supportiveness stems in no small part from a strong (and perhaps unsurprising) sense of duty that pervades the RAF. ‘You’re there to do a job,’ states Coles bluntly. ‘Everybody has to pull their weight and get on with it. It’s about providing air power, not who you are as a person.’ Cpl Taylor agrees, explaining that his work group ‘knows I go out and do the job to the same standard they do and that being gay never comes into it.’ Hetero- or homosexual: it’s something for off hours. ‘The Air Force has no interest in your sexual orientation,’ clarifies Cpl Butchart-Kelly. ‘The ability to do your job is all that matters.’

Our interviewees describe some of the other realities facing an LGBT person in the military. For example, coming out is no harder or easier than anywhere else (says Butchart-Kelly: ‘I didn’t walk in on day one of basic training with a feather boa wrapped around my neck screaming, “I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it,” but it just came out in conversation’), but as Flt Sgt Cotman points out, ‘you have to keep going through that process every time you join a new unit.’ To be fair, she argues, ‘it’s no different to any other organisation when you get a new job or join a new team.’ Butchart-Kelly also cites the military’s unique closeness. ‘The people you work with become your extended family,’ he says, ‘because you’re all living and working in the same space.’ You can’t be thin-skinned: Flt Lt Coles explains that ‘the military is based on banter.’ Realistically, that is something everyone has to deal with, but the Air Force is no longer an environment where someone has to accept prejudice. Coles relates a story of someone taking offence at banter: ‘The person who’d instigated it hadn’t realised. We sat down, discussed it, came to an amicable agreement and we moved on. Lessons were learnt, people were happy and you actually end up more productive in the long run.’

Coles credits the training he’s received with enabling him to handle such situations, and it’s clear the RAF has invested a lot in delivering regular mandated Equality and Diversity training to all personnel, with further courses for officers and senior airmen. The Air Force has also encouraged and benefited from high-profile inspirational role models such as Wing Commander Mark Abrahams, one of this magazine’s LGBT Heroes, who persuaded it to allow personnel to march in Pride for the first time in 2006. Abrahams was a founder of the RAF LGBT Forum, which Cpl Butchart-Kelly describes as filling the role of the expert customer, ‘so that when they made policy that affected LGBT personnel, they were actually taking the advice of the people that were affected.’ Acting as an interface between the Service’s LGBT community and its senior hierarchy, the Forum has lately been working on guidance for medical officers and ensuring the RAF is fully inclusive of alternative families. ‘Every policy that relates to marriage also states “or civil partnership”,’ Flt Sgt Cotman reveals. Cpl Taylor adds his conviction that, through the Forum, the Air Force top brass has ‘sat and engaged with us and took on board what we’ve said to them.’

Despite our interviewees’ positive attitudes, we’re told that some things could still be improved. Experiences of basic training are still mixed. While Cpl Butchart-Kelly acknowledges it is ‘a highly stressful environment,’ he claims his was a positive experience: ‘people just accepted me for who I was.’ Conversely, Cpl Taylor relays his concern that it is still an environment where gay recruits can have difficulties when thrown together with ‘some people who’ve never, ever met a gay person in their life.’ He worries that ‘the recruits feel they can’t speak up because they’re brand new into the job and they don’t want to be seen to be creating a fuss.’ Taylor asserts that things are getting better, though, and certainly the LGBT Forum is actively working on improving the environment during training and in youth organisations like the Air Cadets.

There is also the suggestion that young LGBT recruits might feel they lack someone with whom to speak and ask advice – the phrase ‘the only gay in the village’ is used independently by two of our interviewees to describe the feeling. That is being addressed, says Cpl Butchart-Kelly: ‘The Air Force is putting a lot of effort into making sure all the Equality & Diversity advisors on stations know how to deal with those kinds of issues, and if they don’t know the answers they know where to look.’ There is an extensive community website for LGBT personnel and those thinking of joining the RAF (and the Royal Navy and Army), and the Forum is setting up a support network that will be able to direct LGBT Service members to others in the Air Force, who may be able to give advice. ‘It’s an amazing step,’ Butchart-Kelly declares proudly.

He admits older servicemen sometimes ask questions like, ‘Why isn’t there a straight white male conference?’ but he doesn’t see that as indicative of homophobia. Rather, ‘they don’t understand that gay people face different issues than they do, and therefore to a certain degree require some special attention.’ He likens it to when women first became an integrated part of the Royal Air Force, and ‘there were certain issues and things that they needed specialist officers and meetings to talk through, because a team of straight white males didn’t understand what a bunch of young women were going through.’ Still, there appears to be an appetite to begin amalgamating the LGBT work with the rest of the Equality and Diversity programme. ‘We’ve won our right to be the people we are,’ argues Flt Lt Coles. ‘Now that we’ve established the cause, bring it under Equality & Diversity and blend it in.’

Coles contends that a distinct LGBT Forum, beyond its obvious benefit, ‘still puts a separate little group of people to one side’; he looks to a future ‘where you do not need to do these sorts of things.’ There is a tacit acknowledgement that separateness can make life harder in a military setting. ‘Don’t try to segregate yourself by making yourself different,’ counsels Cpl Butchart-Kelly. ‘If you try to set yourself apart from everyone else you’ll be treated differently. But if you just accept that you’re all in the military, you’re all there to do a job, and that that one part of you is only one part of you, you’ll fit in and do fine.’ Does this require some self-censorship? He argues strongly against such a notion, pointing out that he lives on camp with his husband, thus completely integrating his homosexuality and work life without any problem. Moreover, the importance of Pride (an event incompatible with reticence) is fully appreciated. It’s a rare opportunity to bring together LGBT people in the Air Force – ‘by our very nature we’re a spread-out bunch of people!’ – but also ‘a show of strength’. For Pride 2010, Butchart-Kelly recalls, ‘we had pilots, nurses, intelligence analysts, RAF Regiment gunners, admin officers – literally all walks of the Royal Air Force all turning up. And I just think that’s amazing.’

Looking at the policies enacted by the Air Force and speaking to serving members, the commitment of the RAF to these issues is plain to see. ‘They’ve kept at it,’ says Flt Lt Coles. ‘It’s not something they’ve done in a whimsical, “one-off presentation and that’s it, leave it alone” way.’ The Royal Air Force is listening, and training and improving to such a degree that in just 11 years it has gone from an organisation that banned gay people to one not only on par with any other employer in the country, but one judged worthy of special merit by Stonewall. For those looking on from across the Atlantic and other countries still to fully integrate their armed forces, there must surely be a lesson in that.

This article appeared on SoSo Gay in April 11, written by Colin Warriner.