A secret history of gay people in the US military

A unique depiction of military life

Now Boots shines a spotlight on the courage and resilience of service members, who sublimated an integral part of their identity in order to serve. Created by Andy Parker, whose previous credits include Netflix’s adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s LGBT literary classic Tales of the City, Boots is faithful to the spirit of Cope White’s book, which is candid, comedic and bigger on positivity than pity. Miles Heizer stars as Cameron, a closeted gay teenager who enlists in a Marine Corps boot camp in a desperate effort to belong – much as Cope White did. “I know I’m a man, but society was telling me that I was less than [because of my sexuality],” the author recalls. “I went into that environment to find my place in the masculine world, even though it’s potentially the roughest place to find that.”

But at the same time, the eight-part series makes significant changes to the book’s scope and setting. Where Cope White began boot camp in 1979, Boots relocates the action to 1990, just four years before “don’t ask, don’t tell” was introduced. If the series is renewed for further seasons, as Parker hopes, this policy should provide plenty of dramatic grist to go with the other storylines. “Our gay main character certainly has a secret that’s very high stakes for him in that environment,” Parker says, “but everybody he meets there also has something they’re hiding or running from. That commonality felt, to me, like an interesting thing to explore.”

Even with its homoerotic frisson, this sense of absurdity reflects what was a desperately sad and destructive real-life situation for many service members. “Some of the former marines who worked on this series [as historical advisers] aren’t gay, but they found these policies just as absurd [as their gay counterparts],” Parker says, pointing to the way they seemed “completely counterintuitive to the social cohesion” at the core of military life. Cope White says his main reason for leaving the Marines after six years of service was the constant toll of lying – something Cameron has to navigate throughout the series. “The Marines is a place to find your authentic self,” he says. “But I wasn’t allowed to be my authentic self, and I couldn’t continue being inauthentic with people that I admired and respected so much.” 

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