West Point has hosted what is believed
to be its first wedding of an active-duty same-sex couple.
According to The
New York Times, Captain Daniel Hall, 30, and Captain Vincent
Franchino, 26, exchanged vows last weekend at a ceremony held at the
military academy. A Unitarian minister performed the ceremony at
Cadet Chapel.
The military policy known as “don't
ask, don't tell” prevented lesbian, gay and bisexual service
members from revealing their sexual orientation. President Barack
Obama signed legislation repealing the policy in 2010.
The men, both Apache helicopter pilots,
met at West Point in 2009 and served under “don't ask, don't tell.”
“We’ve experienced everything from
people feeling awkward around us to being called faggots while
holding hands and walking down the street, stuff like that,”
Franchino said. “But despite what we’ve been through, nothing
was worse than having served during the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
years.”
“[We] couldn't tell the truth for
fear of what would happen to us.”
“So we put it in our minds that we
were never going to say we were gay, we were never going to get made
fun of, and we were certainly never going to get kicked out of the
Army,” he said.
“We were serving under a policy that
was telling all of us – perfectly capable soldiers, sailors, airmen
and marines – to lie about ourselves,” Franchino added.
Last year, President Donald Trump
attempted to implement a policy prohibiting transgender troops from
serving openly. Courts have so far blocked the ban from taking
effect.