Joint Chiefs chairman won't apologize for antigay remark

Senior aides to the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday that Marine Corps general Peter Pace won't apologize for calling homosexuality immoral, an opinion that gay advocacy groups deplored. In a newspaper interview Monday, Pace had likened homosexual acts to adultery and said the military should not condone it by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

''General Pace's comments are outrageous, insensitive, and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,'' the advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web site. The group has represented some of the thousands dismissed from the military for their sexual orientation.

Pace's senior staff members said Tuesday that the general was expressing his personal opinion and had no intention of apologizing. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak on the record.

Rep. Martin Meehan, who has introduced legislation to repeal the current policy, criticized Pace's comments. ''General Pace's statements aren't in line with either the majority of the public or the military,'' said the Massachusetts Democrat. ''He needs to recognize that support for overturning [the policy] is strong and growing'' and that the military is ''turning away good troops to enforce a costly policy of discrimination.''

In an interview Monday with the Chicago Tribune, Pace was asked about the ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and don't engage in homosexual acts. Pace said he supports the policy, which became law in 1994 and prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sexual orientation.

''I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,'' Pace was quoted as saying in the newspaper interview. ''I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.''

Pace, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing. ''As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,'' he said.

The newspaper said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005 government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been discharged because of the policy.

Louis Vizcaino, spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said Pace's comments were ''insulting and offensive to the men and women...who are serving in the military honorably.''

''Right now there are men and women that are in the battle lines, that are in the trenches, they're serving their country,'' Vizcaino said. ''Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their capability to serve in the U.S. military.''

''Don't ask, don't tell'' was passed by Congress in 1993 after a firestorm of debate in which advocates argued that allowing gay people to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units.

John Shalikashvili, the retired Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the policy was adopted, said in January that he has changed his mind on the issue since meeting with gay servicemen. ''These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers,'' Shalikashvili wrote in a newspaper opinion piece. (Pauline Jelinek, AP)