Preceded by short: Private Snafu: Censored, a Warner Bros. World War II cartoon. (5 mins, From Zeitgeist Films) ------------------"Don't ask, don't tell" has a certain ring to it, or so thinks the current administration in its backtracking on gays in the military. But it is the ring of familiarity for gay and lesbian veterans of World War II interviewed in Arthur Dong's film based on a book by Allan Bérubé. "They made you lie, made you live an invisible life," says one man, but as the war progressed and it became clear that, indeed, thousands of lesbians and homosexual men had chosen to serve in the patriotic war against fascism, invisibility wasn't enough. The witch hunts began in earnest against "sex perverts" who were rounded up and locked in "queer stockades," likened to "lepers," and given undesirable discharges with which to try to begin a new life. Despite the persecution, tales of first love, intrigue, and the clever ways men and women found to get around the silence come out in the lively interviews that make up this film. "A quietly devastating documentary" (NY Times).