Scandal in the Navy at the YMCA

One of the concerns still providing much debate, especially in Donald Trump’s America, is the acceptance and inclusion of lgbt personnel in the armed forces. The focus at the moment for Trump’s regime is the presence of transgender personnel.

For seven years, from 1994 to 2011, the USA imposed a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in which lgbt personnel had to publicly hide or deny their sexuality in order to remain in the armed forces. The policy itself has a long history of its own which was in some respects influenced by a scandal which began 100 year ago this month in the US Navy. Wikipedia refers to it as “the Newport Sex Scandal”.


Modern madge of the US naval station
at Newport, Rhode Island.

The scandal began in February 1919 in the naval training hospital in Newport, Rhode Island. In the months prior to this reports of homosexual behaviour at several other naval training stations had reached the US Judge Advocate General. The reports he received from Newport were considered much more serious as Newport was a major naval base.

Events began to unfold when Chief Machinist’s Mate Ervin Arnold was admitted to the hospital with acute rheumatism. He was a self-confessed “gay hunter”, claiming to be able to identify a gay man by his behaviour and speech. He had been a detective before enlisting in the navy and began his witch-hunt of gay men long before arriving in Newport.

Arnold was first made aware of gay activity in and around Newport after talking with two other patients, Samuel Rogers and Thomas Brunelle who both made Arnold’s “gaydar” ping. Thomas Brunelle, rather unwisely, described Samuel Rogers’ reputation as a “pogue”, a man who prefers being a passive gay partner in sex. Even more unwisely Brunelle went on to tell Ervin Arnold of other gay men in the naval station and Newport. This set Arnold on his campaign to hunt down all the gay men in town and lock them up.

Arnold coaxed out more information and was told of the regular gay meeting spots, especially the Newport Army and Navy YMCA and the Newport Art Association.

The Army and Navy YMCA seemed to be the major meeting place, with several of its staff also being gay men. Arnold took his collected information to the station commander, Lt. Cdr. Murphy Foster. Even before Foster had agreed to an inquiry, which would go on to recommend using trained investigators to collect more evidence, Arnold was recruiting sailors to act as spies and pose as homosexuals in order to gather more detailed reports of their activities, however explicit, and however much the spies participated in sexual acts.


Newport Army and Navy YMCA as it looks today.

Foster’s inquiry was passed on to the US Attorney General who handed the investigation over to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, someone who went on to become US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt immediately authorised a full investigation to be led by the gay-hunter himself, Ervin Arnold.

Arnold instructed his spies to use any means to get their evidence, including taking part in sexual activity. By April 1919 there was enough evidence to have 17 sailors arrested based on the spies’ entrapment techniques. Fifteen of the sailors were found guilty of homosexual behaviour and court-martialled. Two were given dishonourable discharges.

What turned the gay witch-hunt into a public scandal against the US navy was the arrest of the naval chaplain, Rev. Samuel Neal Kent on 31st July 1919. Rev. Kent was an Episcopalian priest who had been a military chaplain since 1917 and was appointed as assistant chaplain to the Newport naval hospital during the flu epidemic on 1918. Following the Armistice Rev. Kent remained at Newport.

Ervin Arnold and his spies had seen Rev. Kent visiting the Army and Navy YMCA daily with various men, both military and civilian. Arnold had already established that the YMCA was a regular gay meeting place and it was obvious to him that there was no other reason why Rev. Kent visited the building so often. Arnold instructed his spies to entrap the minister. Their “evidence” led to Rev. Kent’s arrest on eleven counts of “lewd and scandalous behaviour”.

It was at Rev. Kent’s trial that Arnold’s disgraceful techniques were made public. The previous trials of the 17 sailors were military and private. The testimony of Arnold’s spies and the vigour with which the prosecutors handled the case outraged the public more than the idea that an ordained priest was homosexual. Rev. Kent was one of the most respected, liked and honest people in Newport. There was no problem in gathering enough character witnesses to attest to his trusted reputation. The jury agreed, and Rev. Kent was found not guilty, mainly because Arnold’s spies acted under unlawful commands and their evidence could not be accepted. A second federal trial against Rev. Kent also found him not guilty.

By the end of the two trials the public were demanding a response from the navy. A group of clergy presented a letter to US President Woodrow Wilson denouncing the navy’s action against Rev. Kent. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt went on the offensive, claiming he was unaware of Ervin Arnold’s spies or their activities, and that adverse reaction to Kent’s trials would harm the navy’s reputation (as if they hadn’t already done so!). An investigation by the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs began, and in 1920 harshly criticised Roosevelt for his role in the scandal. By this time FDR had left the navy and entered politics, claiming personal political opposition as the reason for the Committee’s findings.

Nothing was done to recompense the sailors court-martialled, or Rev. Samuel Kent. Roosevelt carried on with his political career, refusing to make any further comment on his involvement in the scandal. Most of those accused died in obscurity. Rev. Kent’s reputation was tarnished, despite being found not guilty. His regular visits to the YMCA were seen as courting suspicion and the church gradually removed Kent’s pastoral duties over the new few years. He remained a respected member of the communities in which he lived and fulfilled several voluntary duties. He died in 1943.

The 1919 Newport navy scandal may seem a distant affair, but a hundred years later. There’s still government discrimination in the US military against a significant section of the lgbt community.