MPs surveilled gay bars recording service members’ license plates before 2011

Evidence

Until 2011, the military also exercised broad control over its members’ sex lives and sexuality, by prohibiting same-sex intercourse and identification as anything other than heterosexual. At some bases, MPs would cruise by the parking lots of gay bars to record the license plates of service members. Of course, plenty of service members did maintain surreptitious same-sex relationships, and sometimes they weren’t even all that surreptitious. The power of any total institution is not limitless. Still, the psychological, social, and other effects of forcing people to stay in the closet should not be underestimated. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 462