Brandon Lee Starred in Gay Porn While Serving in Navy

All hands on deck!

​A Pentagon study released last month urged repealing the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, revealing that a majority of servicemen and women had no problems working alongside people who are openly gay.

Just ask porn star Brandon Lee. He says he served in the Navy from 1998 to 2003. Around 2002, he revealed his sexual orientation to his commanding officer. So what happened after he told on himself? Nothing. The funny thing is, he actually wanted to get kicked out of the Navy; he was deployed in the Middle East at the time, and "was ready to throw in the towel."

"I totally thought I would get discharged," he told SF Weekly. Instead, he says, the officer made a joke. "He said, 'Well, it's the new Navy: Need Any Vaseline Yet? That's what the Navy stands for' He was like, 'Carry on.'"

Lee says he didn't formally come out to most of the others. While he studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to become a plane mechanic, his female lab partner acted as his beard. "People thought we were married," he says. "We constantly fought and I called her a bitch, and people thought I was a pimpin' guy. But she was one of my fag hags."

Just another seaman

​Of course, there were always signs of his sexual orientation. For one, he tooted a piccolo in the Navy band: "You don't get much gayer than that." He also hung Britney Spears pictures in his barracks: "They figured I wanted to do Britney Spears. Little did they know I wanted to be Britney Spears."

Lee didn't tell his superiors that, while on leave, he was filming movies such as Throat Spankers, Fortune Nookie, and Asian Persuasion.

Starring in gay porn has gotten other servicemen in serious trouble. Half a dozen Army paratroopers were discharged after being discovered acting on the military-themed gay porn website Active Duty in 2006.

In the end, Lee says the DADT policy didn't affect him much, though he would have preferred to have been out while serving. "It would have been nice, because then I could have been big and flaming, but it taught me how to be butch." Indeed. If you're into gay porn, you may know him as the scrappy, inked-up Filipino American who banged his way through stereotypes to become the first famous Asian top.

Lee says he was honorably discharged at the end of his contract in 2003, and moved last summer from Los Angeles to San Francisco to start a catering career (his slogan: "Want to taste something ... naughty?"). Now the only sailors he sees are during Fleet Week. "There were so many fags in the Castro, and I'm like, 'Heeey sailors!'"

[Read about Lee's new catering business on our sister blog SFoodie.]

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