Marine marries boyfriend after viral homecoming kiss
Marine Sergeant Brandon Morgan married his husband Dalan Wells last week.
The couple – whose image quickly became the symbol of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ era in the USA – finally got married last weekend in New York.
The pair – who have been together for seven years – rose to prominence back 2012, when Sergeant Morgan returned from a six-month tour in Afghanistan.
Upon getting off the plane, he ran straight into the arms of his loving boyfriend Mr Wells.
Their heartwarming homecoming kiss was captured by a friend – who later posted it on a Facebook page titled Gay Marines.
The photo went viral with more than – 20,000 people sharing it in less than 24 hours.
“This is a homecoming picture – gay, straight, lesbian, no matter who you are, love is love,” Morgan said of the photo.
“We haven’t fought for more rights or better rights than anyone. We’ve fought for equal rights, and now we have them.”
He proposed to Mr Wells in 2013 – a year after the picture of their touching reunion took social media by storm. They have been together since 2008.
The ban on openly gay and lesbian US troops ended in 2011 after nearly two decades.
The law – known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – allowed gays and lesbians to serve in the military if they kept their sexual orientation a secret.
Despite this, the US military continues to ban transgender people from serving under outdated medical regulations.
These state that people are banned from service if they have “current or history of psychosexual conditions, including but not limited to transsexualism, exhibitionism, transvestism, voyeurism, and other paraphilias”.
However, the Pentagon recently announced it will end the ban within the next year, according to reports.
A leaked draft memo from The Pentagon revealed that the United States government plan to lift the ban on transgender troops by May 27, 2016, although an official statment is yet to be made.
