First active-duty, same-sex couple married at West Point

A newly wedded couple is believed to be the first active-duty same-sex pair to be married at West Point, The New York Times reported Friday.

Capt. Daniel Hall, 30, and Capt. Vincent Franchino, 26, were married in a ceremony at the military academy last weekend.

The ceremony was performed by a Unitarian Universalist minister at Cadet Chapel at the United States Military Academy.

{mosads}The couple, both Apache helicopter pilots, told The Times that they both served under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which was repealed in 2010.

“We’ve experienced everything from people feeling awkward around us to being called faggots while holding hands and walking down the street, stuff like that,” Franchino said.

“But despite what we’ve been through, nothing was worse than having served during the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ years,” he added.

Franchino also said both men “couldn’t tell the truth for fear of what would happen to us.”

“So we put it in our minds that we were never going to say we were gay, we were never going to get made fun of, and we were certainly never going to get kicked out of the Army,” he said.

The men met at West Point in 2009, when Hall was a senior and Franchino was a freshman.

“Through mutual friends at West Point, we had each learned the other was gay, and though we were attracted to one another, we couldn’t say or do anything about it,” Hall told the Times.

“It’s really frustrating when two people have feelings for each other but are not allowed to act on them,” he continued. “We were serving under a policy that was telling all of us — perfectly capable soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines — to lie about ourselves.”

Their marriage at the legendary West Point comes after President Trump attempted to implement a ban on transgender service members last year.

However, federal courts blocked the ban and transgender troops were allowed to enlist on Jan. 1.