Gays in the RAF

[D O Guerrero]

Christ.... this post makes for depressing reading. Its worse than a Daily Mail editorial.
GP, I think you've probably experienced a flavour of the kind of moronic comments and attitude you can expect to find in the RAF.
It seems to me that a person's ability to do their job in the forces is what matters, not your sexuality. Yes, people will have a problem with it and when your back is turned will make comments about you and your "perversion", to quote JN. To your face they will be pleasant and poilte and feign tolerance about your partner. Strange though that they will be the ones making the big deal about it, not you. Why the hell should you hide who you are just to please the idiotic bigotry that is clearly alive and well in the RAF?
A lot of people will say "I haven't got a problem with gays, I just don't want it shoved down my throat". Yes, highly original and hilarious. But, what they really mean is "I have got a problem with gays, they scare me and I want to sound a bit more liberal than I really am". Any sentence that begins with "I haven't got a problem with....", "some of my best friends...." or "with all due respect..." usually mean precisely the opposite.
Many men have a total fear of homosexuals; they believe, as evidenced here, that you will be eyeing them up in the shower or cruising the mess accommodation by night. They also have an irrational belief that all gay men want to have sex with them. They think that it is ok for them to talk about tits and fanny and be one of the lads in the bar, but that it is not acceptable for you to do the same because you have a perversion. I would think you can probably live with all that and deal with it. But it will not be easy. The RAF is about 30 or 40 years behind the rest of society when it comes to social attitudes and in some respects it still (along with the other services, to a lesser extent in my experience) serves as a haven for the socially inadequate, where they can maintain their "old-fashioned", or as I would call it, offensive, attitudes and beliefs. The same people still refer to "WRAF's" and believe that women should do only the typing or stay at home to kick out offspring for them.
You will find some people who are genuinely unbothered, but not many. At the same time, it is no better in civvy street. The difference in the RAF is that officially, discrimination against gay people is not permitted. Whilst a flavour of homophobia prevails, it is not officially tolerated.
So its a mixed bag really and will depend entirely on who you end up working with. If you can put up with the sniggering, then you should be fine. If it really bothers you and you see yourself becoming a champion of gay rights, I'd give it a miss and preserve your sanity. You have every right to serve your country regardless of your sexuality and I wouldn't pay a single bit of attention to the cretins on here (I potentially include myself in this description...).
I think its a real shame that a young person who has asked a serious question, very politely, about what he clearly has worked very hard to achieve, is shot down in flames like this. The majority of people here should be ashamed of themselves.