I've been out longer now than I was in, but I can easily recall at least ten times I encountered openly serving, active duty gays, all of whom were as deeply ensconced in their units as any straight GI. I graduated from Basic training April 1980. June 1980, a young Army private and I were assigned to the same year-long training school; gay as the day is long. Your blind grandmother would have known she was a 'mo, a Home Depot lesbian before the company was ever thought of. Within a few months, she married an equally gay Navy guy. Wonder why. The rest of us would watch them, ambling listlessly around hand in hand every so often, smirk at each other and say nothing. We spent eight hours a day together for a year and partied together off duty; we never met the guy. Without ever agreeing to, we didn't even tease her about him lest an unfriendly overhear. Looking back, it's remarkable how not a big deal it was, especially since most of us were still pretty homophobic. I know I was. Gays might be bad but Pat? She was cool.

Fast forward to my last year of service, 1992, at the Pentagon: I went to meet up with a friend and waited in her admin area rather than run the security gauntlet. By the time she joined me, my eyes were round as saucers and my jaw was slack as I watched her admin chief flounce around, doing his job. Sorry, I behaved badly but I was just so shocked; I'd never seen one so out on duty and that was dangerous for everyone because no one wants to be called to testify at a court martial. 

When I tried to ask if, perchance, she had noticed anything at all unusual about him, Mary brusquely said: "Shut the fuck up." Really. Shut the fuck up. She was a lover of profanity at the best of times so you have to factor that in, but the message was clear: he may be a faggot but he's our faggot. I pulled it together and that was that.  

Final example (we're leaving out the regular gaydar pings as random GIs passed by) happened in Turkey. I'd deployed to augment a unit from the states; five women and three hundred men. All the women who weren't me were involved long term with men in the unit who had also deployed; that made them not safe, but as safe as they could be in the situation. Much safer than me. Given that all there was to do was drink and work, work and drink, it was simply a dangerous place for an unaccompanied woman and I never let myself forget it for a minute. Worse of all, that wasn't the kind of thing that could be discussed ("not a team player" my next evaluation would read) but my problem was solved when I met my deputy. Totally gay. Extra gay. Gay for no reason at all. We never discussed it. We also never discussed his accompanying me everywhere I went and I do mean everywhere. Eventually, grudgingly, the men accepted it, with varying degrees of civility. There was no getting me alone so say what you had to say, do what you had to do, in front of my boy. The men muttered bored insults at him all the time as we moved about, things like "here comes the Captain's puppy," or "why don't you just carry her purse for her". But never "faggot". If he heard them, he gave no mind. In fact, I think he was only insulted that way because they knew he'd blow them off, no offense taken. He wasn't stoic, he was family. And if I knew it, there were at least six to ten senior officers in his chain of command who knew it, too. 

There was whole scale collusion to protect gays in the military that simply could not have functioned without the brass's tacit approval.