Tolerance is one thing, acceptance quite another
I agree Beagle, the two things are certainly not the same. Striving for tolerance is both pointless and vaguely insulting. It's not as if I (or any of my queer comrades) regard ourselves as being candidates for tolerance, as that simply goes back to what said previously about fostering the notion that being gay is somehow wrong, or even unusual, which it cleary isn't - it's just a fact of life, rather like the colour of one's eyes. Acceptance is the key, and I'm sure that it will take a very long time for everyone (especially in the forces) to finally accept and understand that there are some facts of life that simply need to be accepted. Then we can finally move on. But we're getting there slowly and it's a gradual but inevitable process. In all fairness I think the armed forces have now done everything they can to wipe-out any overt homophobia and bigotry, so we're only left with the task of persuading the remaining die-hards that we're just normal people, the same as everybody else, but with a preference for people of the same sex, just like they have a preference for people of the opposite sex. That's all there is to it, and all the other "baggage" is purely in the minds of fools, religous bigots and (some) media!