Five months after the military's ban on openly gay service expired, a photo of a young gay Marine's homecoming kiss has gone viral.

Nearly 15,000 people have liked the picture on Facebook, which was posted in a group for gay Marines on Saturday.

The Marine, Brandon Morgan, posted a response on his Facebook wall according to the JoeMyGod blog. "To everyone who has responded in a positive way. My partner and I want to say thank you. Dalan, the giant in the photo, can't believe how many shares and likes we have gotten on this. We didn't do this to get famous,or something like that we did this cause after 3 deployments and four years knowing each other, we finally told each other how we felt," Morgan wrote.

He responded to "haters" who criticized him for kissing in uniform. "If the Sergeants Major, Captains, Majors, and Colonels around us didn't care...then why do you care what these random people have to say?"

In December, two female naval petty officers became the first same-sex couple to share the traditional first kiss on the pier when the ship returned from an 80-day deployment.