From the First Gay Kiss to “Woke Garbage” – the Department of Defense’s Censorship of Queerness in Film

by Laura Herges

May 16, 1929, would go down in history as the birthday of the world’s most prestigious awards ceremony. Nearly 100 years ago, the first Academy Awards took place inside the Blossom Ballroom at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. 270 people had bought a ticket for 5$ (92$ adjusted to inflation) to attend the ceremony, which only lasted 15 minutes, during which 12 awards were given to their respective winners. The film winning the arguably most important award, Best Picture, was Wings. The war epic portrays two romantic rivals, Jack (played by Charles “Buddy” Rogers) and David (played by Richard Arlen), who join the Army Air Service to fight for the United States in World War I and become friends fighting side by side. At the end, David passes away tragically in a friendly fire incident, but only after sharing what is argued to be the first gay kiss in film history with Jack on his deathbed.

This is debatable, since throughout the movie both David and Jack are romantically interested in women, and there is not a single scene that indicates any romantic tension between the two. Furthermore, David kisses his mother on the mouth in a similar fashion before going to war, indicating that a kiss was not considered something strictly romantic at the time of the film’s release. What sets Wings apart from other movies, however, is not only its budget or its “queer” kiss, but also the fact that this was the first film that received major support from the Department of Defense, for its impressive flying scenes, which set the standard for future combat movies (Suid 2002: 33).

Wings is only one of many DoD-supported films, the most prominent examples of which include Top Gun (1986), Transformers (2007) and several entries from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The DoD’s support, however, comes at a price: There are several rules producers need to follow when cooperating with the DoD on a film project, and various themes the Pentagon censors in film scripts on a regular basis. This article will illustrate how one of these taboo topics, homosexuality, has been suppressed both by the film industry and DoD regulations for several decades – and how it is still being suppressed although all regulations forbidding queerness in film and in military service have long been abandoned.

How the DoD supports (and censors) films

Since World War I, the DoD has supported more than 2,500 films and tv shows in a cooperation system referred to as the military-entertainment complex. Many film productions lack the budget to produce their movies without the DoD’s support, creating a dependency on the military’s goodwill. Another problematic aspect is the fact that there is no label showing that a film was produced in cooperation with the DoD. If a film producer wants to receive the DoD’s support, there are specific steps that must be followed:

1. The producer contacts the DoD, gives them a brief description of the project and tells them exactly what would be needed for the film project (e.g. jets, tanks and other hardware, technical advisors, the permission to film at a military base, soldiers as extras etc.) and when the filming would take place.
2. If the DoD is open to supporting the project, the producer must send five copies of the full script to the DoD. Depending on the branch whose support the film project requires (Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard), the DoD forwards some scripts to the film office of the respective branch. It is also possible to involve multiple branches in a film project.
3. The DoD and the involved branch(es) review the script. At this stage, they are allowed to change the script as they please: If there is any scene, dialogue, and in some cases even characters they do not want in the script, they have the permission to remove them entirely or to change the script. According to the DoD’s former entertainment liaison Phil Strub, media productions the DoD supports should:
   1. be “feasible and authentic” (Robb 2004: 44)
   2. “inform the public about the military” (ibid.) and
   3. “help military recruiting and retention” (ibid.)

It should, however, be noted that Strub claimed that “[a]ny film that portrays the military as negative is not realistic to us” (Turley 2004: 18).

4. If the producer agrees to adjust the script to the DoD’s recommendations, a technical advisor gets assigned to the film team. Apart from telling the actors how to operate the military equipment provided, their job is to make sure that only scenes from the DoD-approved script are filmed.
5. After the film is completed and edited, the final version is screened to several members of the DoD and the branch(es) involved. Again, they can point out any scenes they disapprove of, which then must be reshot or cut out. Only if the committee agrees with the final product can the film or tv show be released to the public (Robb 2019: 230-231).

There are certain taboo topics, such as any kind of unprofessional behaviour, discrimination within the military or drug consumption, which usually get cut from the script (Robb 2019: 232-233). In some exceptional cases, they can remain in the film, for example if the culprit gets prosecuted within the military and faces consequences for their actions (Stahl 2022: 14). One taboo topic, however, has a more complicated history than the others: homosexuality.

Don’t ask, don’t show (anything gay)

While Wings was the first movie to depict a same-sex kiss, this became unthinkable very soon: Only one year after the film was awarded the Best Picture trophy, the Hays Code, named after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, began regulating what could be shown in films and what was prohibited over the next three-and-a-half decades. Besides nudity, profanity and 8 other taboo topics, “sex perversion” – which included any form of homosexuality – could no longer be shown in any American film (Chon 2018: 22). The Hays Code was valid until 1968, and, thus, also influenced the cooperation between the DoD and the entertainment industry, which was, at the same time, shaped by the DoD’s restrictive policy towards homosexuality in the armed forces – but more about that later. The clipping below shows some suggested script changes to the 1961 film Marines, Let’s Go. The original script of the DoD-supported film apparently contained a scene in which homosexuality was jokingly referred to, but even the slightest reference to this topic had to be erased:

When the Hays code was abandoned in 1968, the censorship of the DoD remained in place. In fact, sexuality in general – homo- or heterosexual – was usually censored in DoD-supported movies. Although the script of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman went through several rounds of rewrites, the final product still could not secure DoD-support, partially due to its sexually explicit nature (Suid 1996: 221-223). Another example is the 1981 comedy film Stripes, which was produced with the support of the Army. The script went through extensive rewrites because it contained “sex, drugs, disregard for authority, and crass language,” as an internal review document shows:

Homosexuality specifically was never an uncomplicated topic in the military. Though there were no uniform guidelines across all branches before 1949, soldiers caught engaging in homosexual acts were usually dishonourably discharged (Bérubé 1990: 2). In 1949, the DoD standardized a regulation across all branches that forbade homosexual people to serve in the armed forces (Bérubé 1990: 162). Outwardly, the military became more inclusive in the 1990s, with the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, which was instituted by the Clinton administration and was in effect until 2011. This policy prohibited service members from asking their comrades about their sexual orientation, and, thus, made it possible for queer people to join the military again – at first sight. However, the policy also forbade queer service members to speak about their sexual orientation and effectively banned any openly queer people from serving in the military (Dean Sinclair 2009: 705). In other words: service members were allowed to be gay, but only if they were – and stayed – closeted.

The policy is mirrored the script of the episode “Mishap” from the DoD-supported tv show Pensacola, which aired in 1999:

The comment on the right side reveals that the scene “violates” the Don’t ask don’t tell policy, which was scribbled out. Though it is unclear why this happened, the comment illustrates the general sentiment in the military towards any reference to queerness.

Inclusivity, but not like that

After Don’t ask, don’t tell was overturned in 2011, military-supported movies could have included openly queer characters, but the topic remains a taboo to this day. In 2025, the DoD even went one step further: Instead of merely avoiding the topic in the films they support, they openly criticized a production team who chose to portray a gay man joining the Marines. The Netflix series Boots is based on the memoir The Pink Marine by Greg Cope White, a gay veteran who joined the Marines in 1990. Shortly after the series’ release, the news platform Entertainment Weekly sent an inquiry to the DoD, asking them about the project. They received a reply from Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, who called the show “woke garbage” (Nolfi 2025) and claimed that the DoD would not support Netflix’s “ideological agenda” (ibid.). Wilson’s statement reads, “Under President Trump and Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight” (ibid.).

Ironically, this is exactly the image of the Marines the showrunners want to promote: The official description of the show on Netflix states that the main character, “finds new purpose — and unexpected brotherhood — with his motley team of fellow recruits” (“Watch Boots: Netflix Official Site” 2025).  In a reply to Hegseth’s statement, the creator of the show, Andy Parker, claimed that Boots is a show about “experiencing obstacles and finding connections with people you didn’t think you would have. There’s a hopeful message in that there about our resilience and our opportunity as a country to find a connection again” (Holbrook 2025). Interestingly, the show was created with “Marines in the writer’s room and Marines on set” (ibid.) to get an accurate depiction, even without official DoD-support.

Wilson’s statement, however, is only a symptom of the Trump administration’s attempt to limit diversity and inclusion in the military. In September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the name of Harvey Milk, an assassinated politician and gay rights activist who was in the Navy, to be scrubbed from a Navy ship. Furthermore, the Trump administration is currently trying to reinstate a ban for transgender service members, which was abandoned in 2016 (Baldor 2025).

It is safe to assume that Wings, with its depiction of intimacy between two men, even if not strictly romantic, would not be green lit by the DoD today. And without the support of the Pentagon, the first Oscar-winning film would most likely not have been produced at all.

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About the Author

Laura Herges is a PhD candidate at the English Department at Heidelberg University. She holds degrees in English studies (MA) and Romance studies (BA) from Heidelberg University. Her dissertation project, The Military-Entertainment Complex: “Reframing History for a New Generation,” focuses on the depiction of real-life operations of the U.S. military abroad in movies that were produced with the support of the Department of Defense and the CIA after 9/11. Her research interests include American foreign policy, post-colonial studies, film adaptations and feminism in film.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-herges-6ba012306/ | https://www.youtube.com/@Hergesson

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Literature

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Bérubé, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. The Penguin Group, 1990.

Dean Sinclair, G. “Homosexuality and the Military: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of Homosexuality 56 (6), 2009, 701-718.

Holbrook, Damian. “‘boots’ Creator on Connection, the Corps & The Pentagon’s Reaction.” TV Insider, TV Insider, 24 Oct. 2025. Web.

Nolfi, Joey. “Pentagon Slams Netflix for ‘woke Garbage’ amid Release of Gay Military Series ‘Boots’ (Exclusive).” EW.Com, Entertainment Weekly, 16 Oct. 2025. Web.

Noriega, Chon. ““Something’s Missing Here!”: Homosexuality and Film Reviews during the Production Code Era, 1934–1962.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 58, 2018, 20-41.

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Stahl, Roger. Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood. Transcript, Media Education Foundation, 2022. Web.

Suid, Lawrence H. Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. Rev. and expanded ed. Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2002.

Suid, Lawrence H. Sailing on the Silver Screen: Hollywood and the U.S. Navy. 1. printing. Naval Inst. Press, 1996.

Turley, Jonathan. “Foreword,” in: Robb, David L. Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. Kindle ed, Prometheus Books, 2004.

“Watch Boots: Netflix Official Site.” Netflix, 9 Oct. 2025. Web.

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