Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.a fugitive from homophobic injustice in his native Prussia, America's first gay military hero the Baron de Von Steuben (pictured) arrived in Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, in the company of a handsome seventeen year old male assistant employed as his secretary.

Less than one month later, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin was charged with attempting sexual intercourse with another soldier, John Monhort. Only Von Steuben's principled intervention at the courtmartial stopped Enslin from being drummed out of the Continental Army. And despite the anti-same-sex legislation on the State's books, Washington was forced into defining a radical new policy on "Gays in the Military" that was more closely aligned to the enlightenment ideas driving the revolution itself.

Fortunately for the bedraggled militia at Valley Forge, Washington recognised Von Steuben was a military genius. He would mould a powerful force that against all the odds fought the British Army to a draw at the Battle of Monmouth. In the final years of the war of independence, he would serve as Washington's Chief of Staff. His ideas and techniques remained the foundation of the U.S. military for the next century and a half. In short, he was an indispensable individual second only to Washington in terms of his contribution to the cause.

However the full truth of the Enslin affair was only revealed when Captain Daniel Shays interrupted Washington and Marquis de Lafayette locked in a passionate embrace and headed for the mattresses.