Netflix comedy drama Boots centres on a closeted teenager who enlists in the US Marine Corps. With humour and vibrancy, it shows what gay recruits in the armed forces have endured.

Two words seem to define the history of gay people in the US military: service and secrecy. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a trusted advisor of George Washington who is often credited with creating America's professional army in the late 18th Century, is believed by many historians to have been gay. But, like countless service members who followed in his footsteps, he never came out.

That's because, for many decades, gay people were punished by and discharged from the US armed forces. Even in 1994, when it was established that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people could legally serve, it was under a clear directive – "don't ask, don't tell" – which forbade them from discussing their sexuality.

When the "don't ask, don't tell policy" was repealed in 2011, openly LGB people were finally welcomed into the US military, and further progress has been made since then. In June 2024, President Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon to thousands of veterans who were convicted under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Introduced in 1951 and repealed in 2013, this controversial military law prohibited service personnel from engaging in "unnatural carnal copulation" with anyone of the same sex. In a statement, Biden acknowledged that "many former service members... were convicted simply for being themselves".

Now the new Netflix comedy drama series Boots, based on Greg Cope White's 2016 memoir The Pink Marine, is bringing the bravery of gay service members to the fore. Cope White calls military service "the great equaliser" because, as he tells the BBC, "they shave your head, put you in camouflage, hand you a rifle, and tell you you're all the same". But even in recent decades, LGBTQ military personnel have had to fight for the right to be treated the same as their straight counterparts.

Despite its strict wording, Article 125 of the UCMJ never kept gay people from serving their country per se – they just had to be careful not to get caught. "Lesbian, gay and bisexual troops operated under a cloud of fear, suspicion and uncertainty," cultural historian Dr Nathaniel Frank tells the BBC. "Often, [same-sex] relationships that went awry or incidents with a superior or subordinate could lead to blackmail, which was a constant vulnerability for LGB troops." Frank, the author of the 2009 book Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, and the director of Cornell University's "What We Know" Research Portal, notes that a closeted service member's "pay, retirement benefits and entire career was always at risk" if they were outed. "And occasionally, gay people would end up in military jails for engaging in same-sex intimacy," he adds.

Frank says that when the "don't ask, don't tell" directive was introduced by........

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